The Innovation Management Modelling in the Water Sector in the United Arab Emirates: A Mixed-Methods Study

Introduction The increasing scarcity of water in the world coupled with rapid population growth, particularly in urban areas, is an ever more concerning phenomenon and gives rise to the need for appropriate integrated water resources management practices. Water supply, sanitation and water management are recognised as global concerns and have become a part of the Millennium Objectives. The Heads of State and Government convened at the United Nations 2000 meeting committed –upon adopting the Millennium Objectives– to reduce by half the proportion of world population without access to drinking water or basic sanitation services, and to do so by the year 2015. Water is of vital importance to development. The water and sanitation deficit in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region is a major cause for concern. The LAC region possesses 30 percent of the world’s water resources; however, large segments of the population live in areas where water –when it exists– is either scarce or polluted. In addition, the distribution of population with respect to these water resources is highly irregular or inequitable. At present, despite the fact that 86 percent of the region’s population has access to a source of drinking water, only 49 percent has access to sanitation services (Looker, 1998). In the LAC region’s large urban centres, the lack of appropriate sanitation services has resulted in tremendous health problems for the poorest population. It is estimated that close to 150 of the nearly 510 million inhabitants of the region do not have access to any safe source of water at all, and nearly 250 million do not receive sewerage services (Looker, 1998). Many Caribbean islands have a low availability of water, and some of the more populated areas are very limited in this resource. For this reason desalinizing plants have played an important role in some countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas and Barbados. In the cities of the LAC region 13 percent of the population has no access to sanitation services, whereas 7 percent has no access to a source of drinking water. The lack of access to a safe source of water and to sanitation services, together with high population density, generates immense public health problems. In developing nations – where less than 10 percent of wastewater is treated– diarrhoea is one of the primary causes of infant mortality, showing disproportionately high rates in the poor population of these countries. Vector-related disease, such as malaria, also increases in sites containing stagnant wastewater (Looker, 1998).

• Most water challenges are political,economic,andsocial. If we can improve water governance using the integrated approach, we will get closer to a water-secure world. • The purpose of the IWRM tools is to provide assistance in overcoming the largest obstacles to good water governance. • In an effort to encourage a move towards more sustainable approaches to water development and management, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002 called for all countries to craft the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and water efficiency strategies by the end of 2005. • This was emphasized again by the UN-world summit in 2015.

Abstract The power of advanced analytics is substantial. Massive scales of big, structured and unstructured data relieve unthinkable patterns and help us redefine economic models, solve operational inefficiencies and optimize costs. The water utilities could substantially benefit from the data available from new digital assets and smart technologies. Many are facing damaged and failing infrastructure and lack of financial resources for makeovers. However, Industry 4.0 and Digitalization open new fronts and bring new assets such as real-time monitoring of critical systems via IoT and sensors, advanced metering and predictive analytics to improve customer billing, remote data collection systems at pumping stations and water storage facilities and many more. The power of “digital twin”, as a virtual replica of a physical asset, and ways of enriching the traditional data sources with open source data increase considerably the available intelligence for more sophisticated correlation, linkages and insights. This study reviews the core values of big data, advanced analytics, smart technologies and its application in water resources management and it gives concrete recommendation how to accelerate the adoption of use of Big Data by leveraging on technology and innovation.