How digital platforms and AI are redefining sustainable water management in commercial and residential facilities.
Ever wonder how our big buildings—from IT parks to commercial industrials —can become more sustainable with their water use, especially as climate change gets more intense and cities keep growing?
This pressing question was centered at a recent webinar conducted by Vassar Labs in collaboration with the Water Audit Council. The session named “Smart Water, Smarter Facilities,” dove into how digital water management, especially with Vassar Labs’ aquaFACILITY platform, is making it possible to achieve true water neutrality in real-time, boosting operational efficiency and overall sustainability across all sorts of facilities.
Right from the start a Product Manager at Vassar Labs, laid out the fundamental challenge: many industries and urban complexes just don’t have a clear picture of their actual water usage, its quality, or how much is being wasted in real-time.
What’s even more critical is that in many Indian cities, water is often used only once before being discarded, leading to unsustainable “draw-and-dump” practices. This issue is made worse by a significant 30-40% water loss during transmission and distribution—often due to leaks, theft, or unmetered usage—what experts refer to as non-revenue water.
The product manager then introduced aquaFACILITY, which is Vassar Labs’ integrated digital platform designed for residential, commercial, and industrial sites. It’s built on five core principles: water neutrality, water efficiency, sufficiency, compliance, and providing actionable advice. The platform helps facilities keep tabs on their consumption, spot leaks, ensure they meet regulations, and get smart, AI-powered insights to guide their actions.
In one compelling use case, a live dashboard was showcased for Raheja, a Tier-1 residential client. The dashboards track compliance, energy use, and water footprint—all accessible right from a mobile phone. Now, users can easily visualize water consumption, understand important water quality metrics, and even compare performance across different buildings.
Avinash Mishra, former advisor to NITI Aayog and is currently the Chair of the Water Audit Council, firmly stated that old-fashioned manual water audits are a thing of the past. Instead, he strongly advocated for using AI for water management tools and IoT to audit water across its entire journey—from where it’s sourced to where it’s consumed. Mr. Mishra pointed out that these digital tools are great at finding inefficiencies, leaks, and overuse that often get missed by human inspections.
Dr Madhubanti Dutta added that digital water audits and smart meters now enable facilities to track water flow in real time and identify issues well before a pipe bursts—providing exactly the kind of early warning system that cities and infrastructure networks urgently need.
Frederick Royal, Global Practice Leader at Frost & Sullivan, further put water neutrality into perspective within the 6P Water Circularity Framework. This framework really champions the reuse, recycling, and regeneration of water across the board. He highlighted how aquaFACILITY fits perfectly with the principles of scale, speed, and stewardship—which are essential for successful circular systems.
A few key features really caught attention:
Smart Benchmarking: This lets you compare water usage across different towers, plants, or even with similar facilities to spark real change.
Digital Twins for water: These create virtual replicas of real-world situations, helping managers plan for potential breakdowns and make operations work even better.
Sensor & IoT Integration: This allows for real-time tracking of water levels, pressure, and those pesky leaks.
Early Warning Systems: Thanks to AI for water management, these systems send out alerts to prevent pipe bursts and catch any water quality issues.
Data-Driven Dashboards: These provide clear, real-time visibility and predictive maintenance water insights, specifically designed for decision-makers.
All the speakers were in agreement: data is the starting point for achieving water neutrality. Once you can measure something, you can manage it. By digitizing how water is used at the facility level and integrating AI for water management, organizations can significantly cut down on waste, reduce energy consumption, and achieve true circularity.
What’s more, these digital transformation tools shorten response times, improve compliance, and ease the workload on staff. This moves facilities away from constant manual interventions towards a more automated, strategic way of managing water.
This webinar made one thing clear: smart water management is the need of the hour. Whether you’re part of an industry, a residential complex, or a tech park, tools like aquaFACILITY are fundamentally changing the future of water management. They’re not just tracking usage; they’re completely redefining sustainability goals.
At Vassar Labs we make innovation fall into action and create solutions that matter to people. We are passionately working towards a sustainable future by harnessing smart technologies to build climate resilient solutions for water, agriculture, power, land and disaster management.
Copyright © 2025 Vassar Labs, All rights reserved.
