A Strong, Resilient, and Sustainable World

Industrial development through innovation has improved economies and revolutionized life and society primarily in developed countries, as evidenced by the first industrial revolution in the 18th century with steam locomotives, the second revolution in the 19th with electrical devices, and the third industrial revolution in the 20th centuries with electronics. As a result, it has become possible to live a life in which basic safety and security are protected, with electricity, gas, and water becoming social infrastructure, and various modes of transportation and communications can be employed.

However, the rapid development of industry and economy has also led to environmental issues such as climate change that may seriously impact humanity in the future. In addition, the uneven distribution of wealth has led to the expansion of global economic disparities.

Faced with such challenges, society's values, lifestyles, and corporate management have begun to change. The concept of “sustainability” has now broadly penetrated into society, prompting reconsideration of attitudes that prioritize economic efficiency alone. This concept has expanded industry and the economy while protecting the future global environment, with the aim of allowing all people on the earth to fairly receive the benefits of society. Sustainable corporate growth and improvement of corporate values is increasingly viewed as requiring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) viewpoints, and these elements are influencing the decision making of institutional investors (see Figure 1).

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which form the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015, are key strategic targets for companies focused on ESG. While their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, mainly addressed poverty in developing countries, the SDGs target the state of the global economy and society including developed countries, and have a relatively short-term target of 2030. This is due to a sense of crisis—a feeling that if worldwide transformation is not accelerated, the opportunity to correct disparities and restrain humanity's environmental load to sustainable levels will be missed.

Another feature of SDGs is that companies are positioned as one of their main implementers. A key to overcoming various challenges in sustainable development is innovation and investment from private enterprises. Amid such trends, global companies have already begun efforts to integrate SDGs into their management strategies and to link development targets with their business. The ability to respond to social issues has become a driving force behind corporate innovation, thus influencing competitiveness.

There are diverse elements to fundamental human rights and right to life—that is, securing the right of human beings to live as human beings—but among them life infrastructure, particularly water infrastructure, is indispensable. This is presented as goal 6 of the SDGs, “ensuring access to water and sanitation for all.” Water not only directly relates to maintaining life, but is also indispensable to food production. To maintain hygienic living environments and prevent infectious diseases, it is necessary to provide a safe water supply and sanitation measures. Yet, despite being such a vital resource, many countries throughout the world are facing water issues. Particularly in recent years, a combination of factors in emerging and developing countries—increased populations, increasing concentration of the population in urban areas, and higher living standards due to economic development—has increased water demand and degraded the water environment (see Figure 2).

Japan is blessed with water resources that provide relatively little worry of drought, but frequently experiences damage in torrential rains due to climate change, making management of flood control and the water environment increasingly important.

Regarding contributions toward solving domestic and overseas water issues, Kunihiko Okano (General Manager, Water Solutions Division, Water Business Unit; General Manager, Global Division, Water Business Unit) says the following.

“Providing a sustainable, safe water supply is a universal task, one that requires multifaceted efforts based on the circumstances of the country or region. Hitachi is promoting its Social Innovation Business, which aims at solving customers' and society's challenges by applying digital technologies to social infrastructure, and solutions in the water environment field are one of the important themes.

“Through collaborative creation with customers and partners, Hitachi is working to develop products, systems, and services that address various challenges at home and abroad, including water-source conservation, flood control, water supply and sewerage, securing of water resources through desalinization and water reclamation, and wastewater treatment. Applying our accumulated technologies for monitoring control and water treatment and our broad range of product groups, we are combining operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) to contribute to reducing the burden on the water environment and ensure a stable water supply. By applying the Internet of Things (IoT) platform Lumada, we will further advance demand forecasting, wide-area surveillance and control, predictive diagnosis, etc., and contribute to lowering capital investment and operational costs.”

The start of Hitachi's water environment business began at its founding, about 100 years ago. Alongside motors, pumps, which support water supply and sewerage systems, are among Hitachi's oldest products. Hitachi succeeded in increasing the size and reliability of its pumps by using Japanese technologies, thereby spreading the products both domestically and overseas in various fields, from coal mine drainage to industrial, water supply, and power generation applications.

Starting with electrical system control panels delivered to Tokyo's Kanamachi Water Purification Plant in 1934, Hitachi has increased the functionality of monitoring and control systems to support operations by incorporating control and simulation by means of computing and software technologies, thereby contributing to increased sophistication of water supply and sewerage systems. Chuko Kirikoshi (General Manager, Social Infrastructure Systems Division,Water Solutions Division, Water Business Unit) states the following.

“From the dawn of water supplies and sewerage systems until today, Hitachi has collaboratively created solutions to challenges faced in each era along with people working in water supply and sewerage enterprises. We have also engaged in technology development with countries and various partners. We are unifying the wide range of technologies we have cultivated, and by adding the latest digital technologies and considering the flow of both water and information, we have proposed the intelligent water system concept for system-wide optimization of water circulation over wide areas, such as cities and water basins (see Figure 3). We will respond to diversifying water challenges, not only by responding to domestic water issues such as maintenance of aged facilities and technology inheritance, but also by contributing to increased sophistication of overseas water infrastructure and reduced environmental impact.”

In the future, the declining population is predicted to decrease domestic demand for water supply and sewerage systems, and there are projections showing a lack of technical staff, so there are progressing trends toward consolidation where water supply and sewerage projects are jointly carried out by multiple business entities, expansion of public–private partnerships, and the like. Hitachi is working to develop solutions that contribute to optimization and efficiency of the entire water business, for example, by participating in demonstration projects by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that apply cyber–physical systems and the IoT to the operation of water infrastructure to contribute to consolidation of multiple municipalities.

As an example of public–private partnerships, Toda City in Saitama Prefecture ordered a five-year full-service outsourcing of its water supply and sewerage operations that combines customer service and facility operation management services.

There are various needs overseas, such as introduction of advanced technologies for seawater desalination, operation and management of water supply pipes connecting households with water purification plants, and measures against water leakage. In particular, seawater desalination is attracting attention as a measure against drought in areas with limited freshwater resources. Regarding Hitachi's efforts toward reducing power consumption at seawater desalination plants in cooperation with partner companies and others, Okano says the following.

“Conventional reverse osmosis membrane-type seawater desalination plants remove salt from seawater by passing it at high pressure through a membrane with fine pores, so reducing the power consumption of the pumps used is a challenge. We devised an array of cylindrical pressure vessels containing membranes. Controlling and equalizing the flow rate of seawater passing through each membrane contributes to reducing power consumption and equipment costs, as well as to reducing the environmental load due to wastewater. This technology was developed along with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and Toray Industries, Inc. as part of the Mega-ton Water System, under the Japan Cabinet Office's Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology, and is currently being conducted as a demonstration project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, Hitachi is also engaged in collaborative creation with NEDO, Kitakyushu City, partner companies, and others, to create a system that reduces reverse osmotic pressure by diluting seawater with treated sewage water, and is applying the results in a demonstration project in the Republic of South Africa. We will continue to lead in next-generation water infrastructure through collaborative creation with advanced technologies and partners, aiming to become a “comprehensive water service provider” that contributes to markets and to customers' problem solving.”

Both domestically and overseas, globalization and digitalization are increasing interdependence of economic and social systems, and thus the impact of partial dysfunction tends to become widespread. Various systems and products such as mutual collaboration of infrastructure systems, enterprise value chain, and the IoT are being connected in ways that transcend traditional frameworks and borders. This allows today's society to create value, but the downside is that it is difficult for nations and organizations to cope with risks on their own. It is important to build systems that respond by cooperating and coordinating with each other even in emergencies, while simultaneously improving their own security.

For many years, the Hitachi Group has been supporting social infrastructure as a lifestyle foundation with its customers, contributing to the realization of stable supplies of high-quality water and energy, reliable and accurate train operations, and so on.

Based on an approach of protection at the system, organization, and operational levels, Hiroshi Saito (President, Security Businesses Division, Services & Platforms Business Unit) describes the concept of protecting the security of social infrastructure and improving resilience as follows.

“At Hitachi, we believe that there are four important requirements for realizing our social infrastructure security concept: hardening, adaptive, responsive, and cooperative (see Figure 4). Creating a resilient security infrastructure as a foundation on which we construct a flexible and adaptive system that can continuously strengthen advance measures against threats will realize operations that can quickly respond to disasters and incidents. The idea is to protect social infrastructure by sharing information and coordinating operations with other organizations.

“A society symbolized by the multifaceted connectivity of the IoT creates unprecedented value, but will likely also encounter unforeseen circumstances. In such a highly uncertain society, security cannot be protected by conventional measures such as removing the cause of past accidents. Enhancing business continuity and realizing a strong, flexible society in the IoT era will of course require not only the ability to cope with unexpected changes, but also disaster and security policies based on disaster mitigation that minimizes damage, rapid situation analysis, and prevention of secondary damage.”