Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) concluded the DEWA Innovation Week which it held from 21—25 February, as part of the ‘UAE Innovates 2021.’ This is an example of DEWA’s commitment to raise the UAE to become one of the most innovative countries that are prepared for the future. It’s also part of DEWA’s efforts to make government innovation a social culture and a corporate approach. DEWA’s Innovation Week included several virtual activities and events held at the Innovation Tent.

DEWA’s Innovation Week aligns with DEWA’s efforts to promote innovation and its journey towards the next 50 years to build a sustainable future. This achieves the UAE Centennial 2071 to make the UAE the world’s leading nation; and the National Innovation Strategy to make the UAE one of the most innovative nations in the world.

DEWA’s Innovation Week included the virtual Future Next conference which brought together an array of local and international speakers and innovators. It also included DEWA’s Virtual Hackathon, with the theme ‘A Sustainable Global Digital Experience,’ in which its employees participated. DEWA’s different divisions presented 30 new innovative projects, and DEWA organised 20 virtual workshops on future technologies for some 1,000 students and employees.

Innovations in space, robots, sustainability

DEWA presented its latest innovations that use the latest Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and disruptive technologies to provide solutions, projects, initiatives, smart and advanced services in space, cyber security, robots, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), solar photovoltaic panels, smart grids, clean and renewable energy, sustainability, occupational health and safety systems.

DEWA presented its Space-D Initiative to launch a primary satellite to enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness at DEWA. This will support the preventative maintenance of its electricity and water networks. It will also provide flexible and agile monitoring and control of the electricity and water networks. The satellite will be able to provide real-time responses in addressing the impacts of extreme weather events on the energy and water desalination infrastructure.

DEWA also demonstrated its innovations that maintained its business as usual according to the highest standards of availability, reliability, and accountability, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. It also demonstrated its autonomous detection and inspection of solar photovoltaic panels using drone and Al algorithms (Dronimous) and Kinematics.

DEWA promoted its smart grid innovations, including the Next Generation Smart Grid Operations to improve situation awareness, and real-time proactive detection of supply interruption and loss of pressure in the water distribution network without measuring pressure. It also displayed its Artificial Intelligence-based applied to solar generation forecasts and reserve optimisation of the transmission power network, and the Optimal Feeder Reconfiguration of the radial distribution system. The innovations included the Cyber security asset management, which provides a unified view of all assets, users and vulnerabilities by integrating with existing security and management solutions, which will help ensure the security coverage and protection of the DEWA’s environment. This is in addition to a business intelligence data analytical dashboard solution that consolidates data and information for management to have visibility and oversee key performance indicators to improve the speed and quality of decision making.

DEWA also showcased its Mirzab Pipes, where each pipe can detect internal water leaks inside itself when a device is added to it from the outside. This device sends alerts from the pipe to a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.

Virtual Hackathon and specialised workshops

During the Virtual Hackathon, DEWA’s employees presented their innovative ideas on improving the future experience, overcoming future pandemics, user-friendly systems and applications, making a happier future workforce, and presenting employees’ ideas on environmentally friendly systems and applications.

DEWA also held a group of virtual workshops on the Afkari platform to encourage staff innovation and creativity. This is in addition to a series of panel discussions on different subjects such as: Artificial Intelligence in Building Life Cycle Management; What is Enterprise Architecture; Cyber Security Analytics using Big Data and AI; Microsoft Teams; User Experience & Customer Journey Mapping on Digital Channels; Leading Through Change with Data & Analytics; Cyber Security Asset Management, RPA Self-Learning Initiative; Use of Robotic Process Automation in Information Security; Future Technology Trends and Digital Transformation; and Cyber Attacks and Detection Automation or Automated Purple Teaming.