Explorations in Data Mining for the Water Sector

Techniques for extracting knowledge from (combinations of) databases, often presented under the flags of data mining and big data, have shown significant development over recent years. Many techniques are already being used every day in all kinds of contexts (often without our being aware of it). Also, more and more data is being collected, both in general and specifically by the water companies. This is expected to only increase in the future (developments in sensors, robotics). Initial attempts have been made at applying these techniques in the water sector with the objective of ‘obtaining more insight from the available data’. However, these attempts have not yet produced ‘revolutionary’ results. That is not to say that results to date have not been interesting. These results make clear that there are significant opportunities for the application of data mining techniques in many areas in the drinking water chain, from source to tap.