The world‘s leading trade fair for water, sewage, waste and raw materials management, takes place at the Messe München exhibition center in Munich from May 14 to 18, 2018. The two newly built halls C5 and C6 will be used by exhibitors for the first time this year. The total area covered by Ifat 2018, including the outdoor exhibition site, will thus expand to 260,000 m2. As part of this expansion, changes are being made to the layout of the exhibition: The section on water and sewage will occupy the halls at the western end and the open-air site to the north of the C halls; the section on recycling and municipal technologies will be located in the halls at the eastern end and on the adjacent open-air site, at F7 and F8. Stefan Rummel, Managing Director of Messe München, is confident that “with this clear arrangement according to themes, visitors will find their way around easily and more quickly. Our customers will therefore be able to reach all the key companies of interest to them more effectively. In addition we now again have the capability of expanding further and can offer more companies the opportunity of taking part in Ifat.”
Silvia Fritscher, Exhibition Director of Ifat at the trade-fair company, has observed that for some years now more and more of the innovations presented at Ifat are to do with the key topics of digitalisation, automation and Water 4.0. This is a trend that will further strengthen in 2018.
“The greatest progress in digitalisation in the drinking water sector is seen currently in the areas of pump controls, measurement technology and drinking water analysis,” says Julia Braune, Managing Director of the German Water Partnership (GWP), an industry and research network. She continues: “While digital integration of pump controls is already well advanced, there is still much potential in the connecting up of system components using sensors, for example for analysis. Ever better communication between the various parts of the water production process—for example, springs, waterworks and the drinking water network—can both enhance the security of the supply and also optimize energy and resource efficiency.”
Even more extensive scope for digitalisation lies in setting up a “digital twin”. This is a data model which depicts a machine, a system or even a complex infrastructure with all its information and interdependencies. Christian Ziemer, Siemens AG and Head of the GWP Working Group Water 4.0, sets out one possible application in drinking water and waste water: “With a digital twin we can do real-life simulations, completely without risk, to test various approaches and optimize them.”
