March 2026

Conference Paper

Data about data – when, why and how metadata can support the digital plant

By:
Alferes, Janelcy; Chandrasekeran, Prabhushankar; Fierro, Gabriel; Molin, Hanna; Aguado, Daniel; Garcia Mendez, Maria R; Plana, Queralt; Snowling, Spencer; Samuelsson, Oscar; Therrien, Jean-David; Villez, Kris Roger Elie
Page Number:
2
Book Title:
Proceedings of the 14th IWA Specialized Conference on Instrumentation, Control and Automation
Publication Date:
March 12, 2026
Conference Name:
14th IWA Specialist Conference for Instrumentation, Control, and Automation (ICA)
Conference Location:
Oslo, Norway
Conference Sponsor:
International Water Association

Abstract

A structured approach for recording data quality and contextual information about how and why a signal exists – i.e. metadata – is central to interpret and use sensor data correctly. This is becoming increasingly important with the global trend with data-driven applications such as digital twins and AI-models. But a structured metadata collection and organization of sensor data is not routine in most plants, which can result in lost information and missed opportunities to make use of the investments made in the data collection. Therefore, the IWA task group on Metadata Collection and Organization in wastewater resource recovery systems (MetaCO) was initiated in 2020 and recently delivered the IWA scientific and technical report number 31. The report gives and in-depth description about metadata in water resources recovery facilities (WRRFs) and is available as open access at IWA publishing. The report is the outcome of the collaboration between more than 80 water professionals with the intention to serve WRRF data users with a guide on how to structure and make use of metadata throughout the data pipeline in order to maximize the value of sensor data.


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