Innovation Flows Through VR for Water Utility

Abstract

Yorkshire Water commissioned a project with the AMRC to investigate the use of Virtual Reality (VR) during the design phase of their new ‘standard product’ catalogue. The project highlighted a number of design considerations which could be validated more easily, and rapidly through the exploitation of immersive VR, rather than the traditional approach of evaluating physical fluid handling prototypes which were very often scrapped. The use of VR not only produced significant cost savings for the company and consumers, it also enabled Yorkshire Water to reduce its carbon footprint as part of its mission to become a more sustainable utility through its Climate Change Strategy. The final phase of the project involved the successful implementation of a VR system which Yorkshire Water has incorporated into their product design lifecycle.