Published: Oct 29, 2025

Creating resilience through innovation: How water utilities can harness customer experience, digital twins, and AI to build future readiness

Part 1 – Water intelligence: An NCS whitepaper

We’ve released a whitepaper – Creating resilience through innovation: How water utilities can harness customer experience, digital twins and AI to build future readiness – exploring how customer experience, digital twins, and artificial intelligence are delivering measurable outcomes for water utilities and the communities they serve.

Water utilities today stand at a crossroads. On one side are the familiar challenges: ageing infrastructure, natural disasters, increasing regulation, and tight budgets. On the other side are new pressures – climate change, shifting customer expectations, cyber threats, and rapid technological disruption. Together, these forces demand a new way of operating, one that is not only efficient but also resilient, adaptive, and future-ready.

Across Australia and around the world, water utilities are beginning to harness digital technologies to meet this moment. Customer experience platforms, digital twins, and artificial intelligence are no longer theoretical innovations; they are practical tools delivering measurable outcomes for utilities and the communities they serve. This white paper explores how each of these three domains is transforming the sector, and how utilities can chart a path to future readiness by embracing them together.
 

The convergence of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) is reshaping the water sector. Utilities that invest in integrated, data-driven platforms are building the foundations for resilience, agility, and sustainability. Customer experience, digital twins, and AI each offer powerful tools to respond – but their true power is realised when deployed together.
 

Digital resilience and AI

As utilities progress along the maturity curve, AI will shift from being an add-on capability to becoming core business DNA. AI changes this equation by transforming raw data into actionable intelligence that drives efficiency, resilience, sustainability, and improved customer outcomes.
 

Customer experience

In the era of AI, people couldn’t be more crucial. The utilities that thrive will be those that embed the customer at the centre of their strategy, using digital tools not merely to modernise service, but to build resilience, trust, and long-term relationships.
 

Digital transformation

The greatest opportunities for transformation in the water industry lie deeper within the operational backbone: the networks, assets, and supply chains that keep services running. Digital twins provide valuable analysis for water utility managers and insights for optimising infrastructure operations and planning for long-term impacts. This can provide water utilities with the capability to explore and visualise emerging consumption patterns and their effects on the functioning of water systems and can provide predictive analytics for asset maintenance and business operations.
 

NCS drives responsible growth across sectors like water utilities, energy, mining, chemicals, manufacturing, and construction, enhancing businesses through smarter decisions and optimised operations to deliver operational efficiency, safe and compliant operations, along with enriched employee and customer experiences.

We partner with organisations to help our clients navigate this shift – bringing proven capabilities in digital platforms, AI integration, and cloud transformation. By applying these technologies in context, we can support your team to take practical steps towards better customer experience, more efficient operations and transition to a more sustainable future. 

At NCS in Australia, we are reinventing technology services from the inside out. We provide advisory, design, build and managed services to our clients, with unrivalled service, attention and understanding every step of the way.
 

Our energy, utilities and resources expertise 

Energy, utilities and resources companies play a crucial role in supporting economic growth, ensuring energy security, and promoting sustainable development through innovative technologies and infrastructure investments.

Brooke Mabry is our Energy, Utilities and Resources Lead at NCS Australia. Brooke has authored this white paper in collaboration with several other leaders across our business. Lasath Kahingala, NCS Australia’s Data & AI Consulting National Lead, has shared data and AI insights; while Steve Avery, Stuart Clift and Scott Harford – senior Account Executives and Managers in the Energy, Utilities and Resources industry – have added their valuable insights too. 

Together, the team are focused on delivering value for our clients, and our clients’ customers – with adaptive approaches, outcomes and thinking. They pair this with deep industry knowledge to help our clients succeed, every step of the way. At NCS, we think differently and we are always up for the challenge. Discover how by connecting with our team today.