SmartH2O — Smart Water Intelligence
A comprehensive platform combining smart metering, behavioural modelling, social gaming, and intelligent recommendations to motivate sustainable residential water consumption through user engagement and community awareness.
SmartH2O develops an intelligent, bidirectional platform that empowers water utilities, municipalities, and households to reduce water consumption through real-time data awareness, social engagement, gamification, and evidence-based recommendations.
Problem & Context
Water scarcity and increasing demand challenge urban water systems globally. Despite growing awareness, residential consumption remains high because households lack effective tools to understand their water use, compare behaviour to peers, and find motivation for sustainable change.
Solution & Approach
SmartH2O implements a comprehensive strategy combining smart metering, behavioural modelling, and social engagement. The platform integrates four complementary components:
Real-Time Feedback & Visualisation
Smart meters deliver granular water consumption data directly to households through web portals and mobile apps, making invisible consumption visible and enabling informed decision-making.
Peer Comparison & Social Mechanisms
Households compare their consumption to peers and aggregate benchmarks, activating social norms and healthy competition to encourage conservation behaviour within communities.
Gamification & Engagement
Points, badges, leaderboards, and community challenges transform water saving into engaging gameplay. The Drop! board game further motivates households and educates school children about water conservation.
Intelligent Recommendations & Pricing
Agent-based models and data analytics identify consumption anomalies and provide personalized efficiency tips. Dynamic pricing experiments explore how tariff structures can incentivize conservation during scarcity periods.
Platform Demo
Watch the SmartH2O system overview demonstrating the platform's core features and functionality for water consumption monitoring and behavioural change engagement.
Pilot Implementation & Testing
SmartH2O was rigorously tested in two European water utilities with diverse contexts. The Tegna (Switzerland) pilot focused on smaller-scale deployment, while Valencia (Spain) leveraged 420,000 existing smart meters for large-scale validation. Combined, these sites involved over 550 active users and provided evidence of behavioural change effectiveness.
Active users in pilots
European case studies
Savings vs. control group (Spain)
Peak-period consumption reduction
Results & Impact
SmartH2O produced robust evidence that combining real-time feedback, gamification, and social comparison mechanisms can drive sustained water conservation behaviour. In the Valencia pilot — leveraging 420,000 existing smart meters — active platform users achieved a 21.7% consumption reduction compared to the control group, with a 24.5% reduction during peak demand periods.
Beyond consumption savings, the project demonstrated that gamified engagement — points, badges, leaderboards, and the Drop! educational board game — effectively sustained user participation over time. The research contributed best practices for deploying intelligent water management systems across diverse cultural and technical contexts, informing subsequent EU research on behavioural change platforms for resource sustainability.
EIPCM’s Role
EIPCM contributed to SmartH2O as a research partner, bringing expertise in behavioural change and user engagement. The institute contributed to requirements analysis, platform design, and the validation of behavioural interventions across both pilot sites.
EIPCM’s research focus was on understanding which combination of feedback mechanisms, peer comparison strategies, and gamification elements most effectively motivate water conservation behaviour. This work informed the design of engagement features and contributed to establishing best practices for deploying intelligent water management systems in diverse cultural and technical contexts.
Consortium
Research Partners
- Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull’Intelligenza Artificiale, SUPSI (Coordinator)
- Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
- Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain)
- University of Manchester (UK)
- EIPCM (Germany)
Water Utilities & Industry Partners
- SES Controlli (Switzerland)
- EMIVASA (Spain)
- Thames Water Utilities (UK)
- University of Applied Sciences Stralsund (Germany)
- Set Mobile (Romania)
- Moonsubmarine