Close-up of an illustrated diagram of a neighbourhood showing data flows to apartments.
Case Study: Water Data Futures

Bringing Water Data Futures to Life

Visualisations that reveal the relationships between future technologies, systems and people

Smart technologies offer the promise of more sustainable and convenient water use, especially when they are networked across a community. But who will have access to these new technologies? How will these systems connect and relate to each other? And who will control the rich web of personal data that they generate?

The UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures and Sydney Water are working to ensure policy makers, engineers and urban water planners understand these opportunities and challenges. As part of this, they want to widen decision-makers’ focus from infrastructure and technologies to people and communities.

A diagram of an apartment, showing featuers like sinks, showers and toilets along with flows of fresh and waste water.
A diagram of the same apartment, showing how data flows from smart devices like washing machines, taps and toilets.

Revealing the personal in the technical

Parallel Lines worked with the team from UTS to consolidate their complex and multifaceted research into concise, coherent visual forms. With input from technical experts from Sydney Water, we designed a graphic system that reveals the relationship between future technologies, systems and people.

We designed visualisations that focus on everyday people in a selection of future scenarios. This approach provides a window into different people’s lives, revealing their diverse water practices and the unique challenges they face. Combining illustrations with flow diagrams reveals the hidden networks of water data that permeate the homes of the future.

Illustrations of four residential developments: The Nest, a block of mid-range apartments; Arcadia, a block of eco-luxury apartments; 'The Green' a block of social housing apartments and 'Grevillea Gardens', an aged care home.
Cartoon style illustrations of different characters from the precinct, with labels showing who they are.
A diagram showing water and data flows in an apartment. Labels indicate technical features and highlight personal and social challenges.

The visualisations have encouraged meaningful conversations about how we can embrace and support the future of smart water efficient devices. They have proven to be useful tools for planning and workshops and an inspiration for design sprints.

Anna Flack
Sydney Water
Illustrations of two characters, with speech balloons showing their thoughts about using smart meters.
A diagram of the eco-luxury apartment block, showing how potable, recycled and waste water flow through the building, along with key infrastructure like boilers and cooling towers.
An illustration of the precinct, showing each of the four residential developments and indicating how data from smart devices flows to and from them.
A diagram of the same precinct, showing the urban cooling effect. The illustration is in a faux 'infra red' style, showing how street trees, rain gardens and other features can cool the precinct.
Two views of A Good Life shown on digital tablets

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