103807Prevention of sewer blockages and water utility debt using predictive analytics and behavioural scienceClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKAffordability of water is now a growing concern for many people in the UK; a recent Ofwat report has shown that unpaid water bills are an increasing problem in the UK with £2.2bn unpaid revenue now outstanding. In order to meet the challenging targets set by Ofwat to reduce water bills and improve affordability, water companies must take advantage of new technologies to improve efficiency of the industry as a whole. Advizzo Limited has identified that two of the biggest problems faced by the water industry (consumer debt & pipe blockages) can be alleviated by exploiting unutilised big data to gain behavioural insight, inspire consumer behaviour change and ultimately cut costs. Technological solutions to these problems are limited; water companies currently rely on untargeted letters posted/e-mailed out in high volume to educate consumers, no UK centric software exists to address consumer utility debt and pipe blockages are typically detected using CCTV which is labour intensive. Advizzo will advance on state of the art by using an entirely disruptive software only approach which feeds a unique big data set into a novel machine learning algorithm, to produce tailored behavioural intervention material for consumers. This project is expected to: decrease debt by 20% - 40% with an expected knock on impact of £4 to £9 to each household water bill; and reduce pipe blockages by ~30% leading to a cost saving of ~£24million p.a. KEY WORDS: BIG DATA, MACHINE LEARNING, UTILTIIES