MOSL has published a new version of the publicly available water efficiency dashboard. The latest version uses official Ofwat Water Resource Zone (WRZ) data and newly enriched market data at a supply point (SPID) level, as opposed to meter level, as the dashboard did previously.

This means 99% of water and sewerage SPIDs are now matched to a WRZ, allowing wider visibility of SPIDs in high water deficit and drought restriction zones. This insight will enable improved collaboration between wholesalers, retailers and regional water resources management groups to support the delivery of non-household demand reduction targets. 

WRZs are the building blocks of the water industry. They define the geographical areas used by water companies to forecast long and short term supply and demand balances. These boundaries also define the areas if drought restrictions are brought into force and other environmental data such as water deficits. 

So what was the problem?

The problem was that WRZs are not data items in the market data warehouse. The smallest geographical area that MOSL could categorise SPIDs by was wholesaler region; however, wholesalers can have multiple WRZs within their region, each with potentially very different characteristics. For example, water scarcity may vary between WRZs within a region.

What has MOSL done to solve this problem?

To rectify this problem and unlock the potential of WRZs in understanding environmental data, like high water deficits and drought restrictions, MOSL has enriched the data by linking all market SPIDs with the WRZ they are located in.

SPID ‘point’ location is derived using standard logic that first uses water meter coordinates. If it is unmetered, the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) on the primary SPID is used and, if this is not present, we use the central point of the primary SPID’s postal sector.

Every month, we validate new and updated location data on SPIDs and meters to ensure they are enriched and remain up to date. This enriched data is fed into the MOSL’s data warehouse and linked to further WRZ based lookup data (eg. drought restrictions and water deficits).

What does the dashboard show?

• The dashboard shows that 36% of non-household supply points are in water resource zones with high water deficits
• Also that 33% of non-household water consumption are in these areas with high water deficits
• Did you know? 60% of NHH water consumption is in regions classified by the EA as seriously water stressed

The enriched market data is used on a variety of data services including the Water Efficiency dashboard, the Large Supply Point dashboard and the Drought Restriction dashboard.