AI modelling gives Australia’s water security a boost

Intelligent Software Development owner Dr Don Perugini spent over 10 years in the defence industry using artificial intelligence and intelligent agents to address complex distributed problems including logistics, emergency response and organisational analysis.

According to Preugini these problems have similar characteristics to the water management problem.

“The water management problem comprises physical and social components, such as water supplies and users, and their complex behaviours and interactions, such as economic, political, social, demographic, and environmental factors,” he said.

Through his start-up company Intelligent Software Development, Perugini designed and deployed the defence software to improve the speed and reduce the risk associated with planning major water infrastructure projects.

“We have developed a simulation architecture based on artificial intelligence and intelligent agents which is aimed at addressing complex problems such as the water management problem. We were easily able to adapt our simulation to this problem domain, to create Simulait Water,” Perugini said.

According to Perugini, it took approximately four years to develop the software Simulait, which includes the simulation engine used to create 3D virtual environments; and the underlying agent-based architecture which is capable of modelling and analysing these complex problems, and embed intelligent behaviour into the simulation. It took a further nine months to adapt Simulait to address the water management problem.

Therefore, the software is aimed at local, state and federal government; as well as consulting firms that perform such analysis.

“It is also applicable to water utility organisations investing in large infrastructure and since water is a global issue, there is great export potential,” said Perugini.

The software developer is currently in discussions with SA Water and the Yorke Peninsula Development Board regarding other water management use cases.

Perugini said it was also in discussion with other water companies to collaborate and use the simulation to support their offerings.

“We have already applied our simulation software to three “military” focussed domains: Logistics, Organisational Analysis and Network Centric Warfare. The first two have great commercial applicability,” he said.

Intelligent Software Development is also using its simulation to analyse Urban Water Trading, and investigating the use of simulation for analysing other complex economic problems and problems that require detailed analysis of demographic behaviours.

“For example, our Urban Water Trading model could quite easily be adapted to analyse Carbon Emissions Trading. There may also be potential to analyse strategic aspects of other utilities, such as electricity and gas. There is great potential for our simulation software to analyse these complex problems,” he said.

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