Business Surveys

Objectives for developing alternative water supplies to increase availability and improve water system resilience continue as top priorities for resource stakeholders. This year more than 50 percent of Strategic Directions: Water Industry Report respondents cited resiliency as an increasingly important driver for ensuring reliable water system delivery.

Any PANDORA product starts its journey with our in-house Design team. As a new piece evolves, our designers will make choices on which materials to use. Whenever new materials or suppliers are introduced, our Ethics teams are consulted in order to discuss potential environmental or social impacts. Such early interaction helps to ensure that PANDORA refrains from using potentially problematic materials – and it provides Group Ethics and other departments with valuable knowledge, enabling them to act in due time.

Reliability and resilience are the critical centerpieces of today’s power industry. Even as utilities balance new, advanced technologies and changing regulatory mandates, organizational leaders remain focused on meeting evolving customer demand while delivering reliable, uninterruptable power flows. Black & Veatch’s new 2017 Strategic Directions: Electric Industry Report demonstrates the range of ways in which power providers — from generation to delivery — are broadening their views and adopting more flexible financial, planning and technology initiatives to meet these demands.

Water providers have been collecting and utilizing data to perform important but traditional tasks: Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices speed information across networks, and smart metering infrastructure systems measure consumption and contribute to customer billing. But, as utilities wrestle with addressing aging foundational assets while balancing limited capital and rising calls for lower costs and safer water, there is new urgency to explore how data can drive and optimize asset performance and reduce risk.

Mike Orth, Executive Managing Director for the Americas in Black & Veatch’s water business, discusses how data should drive smarter business decisions for long-term water sustainability.

Yahoo!, the Democratic National Convention and the U.S. Department of Justice were among the high-profile victims hit by major cyber attacks in 2016. Many people believe it’s only a matter of time before a water utility joins the list. Some consider physical security to be the weak link in ensuring a well-protected water supply; while others worry that the Internet of Things has created an incalculable number of entry points for hackers to create mischief.

At Aflac, we try to live by this very simple rule: Everyone has the power to do good. This week, we unveiled Aflac’s 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, where we share with you how Aflac strives to be a good neighbor with good people leading the way. View the report now at Aflac.com/CSRReport. #AflacCSR

By building communications networks that can more tightly integrate business drivers and goals with the day-to-day load demand for their customers, utilities are taking the initial steps toward integrating the smart grid with smart cities.