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Flow time: 5 min I your weekly pulse on AI news, tool and case studies reshaping the water sector
🔍 What’s in today’s flow:
🧪 SIMPO released as a cloud, code-free wastewater modelling platform, letting engineers build and share process models with drag-and-drop blocks instead of custom code
🌐 OpenAI and partners launched the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, creating open standards for safer, interoperable AI agents
🧠 New “confessions” method helps AI reveal rule-breaking and unsafe shortcuts
🧬 PFAS rules are are accelerating demand for AI-driven design tools that produce treatment reports in hours
📚 AI-first learning platforms suffer adaptive lessons built on verified material, helping teams upskill on digital and AI topics
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🔬AI research spotlight: Code-Free Wastewater Modelling with SIMPO
Reference: Simpowater.org
SIMPO (Simulation Platform Online) is a new cloud-based wastewater modelling platform developed by JiangLab at Sun Yat-sen University. It removes the need for coding by offering drag-and-drop process units, dynamic solvers, automatic error checking, sensitivity analysis and parameter estimation, all through a web browser.
Why it matters
SIMPO lowers the barrier to serious process modelling for small utilities and consulting teams without in-house modellers. Engineers can test scenarios faster, assess upgrade options, refine biological models, and build clearer evidence for business cases and regulatory submissions, all without specialised programming skills.
🤖Latest in AI: Open standards for agentic AI
OpenAI, Anthropic, Block and others co-founded the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation to steward open standards for agentic AI including Agents.md, which gives AI agents a consistent way to read project-specific instructions.
The details
More than 60,000 open-source projects have already adopted showing strong community uptake
The foundation also carries Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol and Block’s goose, creating a shared home for agent interoperability standards
Why it matters
For water utilities and rural councils, open agent standards mean AI workflows for monitoring, reporting, and optimisation can move between tools more easily, reduce vendor lock-in, and keep safety and governance rules consistent across systems.
🔧 Case study: PFAS Design workloads and generative Design
Source: transceninfra.com
What happened
New United States regulations for PFAS will require thousands of drinking-water and wastewater systems to add PFAS treatment. Transcend’s Design Generator, an AI-assisted generative design platform, now produces PFAS treatment preliminary engineering reports in hours rather than months, treatment layouts and process calculations for options like granular activated carbon, ion exchange and membranes.
Why it matters
This approach helps utilities compare granular activated carbon, ion exchange and other treatment options quickly, cut engineering backlogs, support regulatory approvals and reduce re-work. It lets utilities and consultants focus their expertise on the highest-risk sites rather than repeating manual design tasks.
🧠 DEEP PROMPT DIVE - Anti-AI voice editor prompt
Sometimes the biggest win is getting AI to stop sounding like AI. Here’s a ready-to-save prompt you can use when drafting memos, reports, or presentations.
Act as my Anti-AI-Voice Editor. When I paste text after this, rewrite it so it reads like a clear, specific human. Not like ChatGPT, Claude, or a generic “AI thought leader”.
Rules:
Preserve content, change only the voice. • Keep my ideas, claims, tense, and person (I/you/we). • Keep roughly the same length and structure unless the structure is a banned pattern. • Don’t invent stories, numbers, or promises. • Output only the edited text. No notes.
Hard-ban words (remove or replace with short, concrete language): delve, realm, harness, unlock, tapestry, paradigm, cutting-edge, revolutionize, landscape, potential, findings, intricate, showcasing, crucial, pivotal, surpass, meticulously, vibrant, unparalleled, underscore, leverage, synergy, innovative, game-changer, testament, commendable, meticulous, highlight, emphasize, boast, groundbreaking, align, foster, showcase, enhance, holistic, garner, accentuate, pioneering, trailblazing, unleash, versatile, transformative.
🔧Trending tool: Learn.Earth
Source: app.learn.earth
Learn.earth is an AI-first adaptive learning platform where you can create personal learning paths on almost any topic, then practise with interactive exercises. It’s useful for water organisations that want staff to build AI, data, or regulatory skills using structured content instead of unfiltered chat answers.
Key features
Topic-based learning paths broken into small, guided steps
Interactive practice with instant feedback that adapts to the learner’s level Learn Earth
Free tier plus low-cost premium plan with more practice “energy” and higher-quality content
⚖️ AI Tool Scorecard
Ease of use: topic-based learning paths broken into small, guided steps Interactive practice with instant feedback that adapts to the learner’s level
Free tier plus low-cost premium plan with more practice “energy” and higher-quality content⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cost: Free tier plus ~US$6/month premium is accessible for individuals and small teams.⭐⭐⭐⭐
Security & privacy: fine for training, not for sensitive operational data.⭐⭐⭐
Integration: orks well alongside existing SharePoint-style hub ⭐⭐⭐
Overall: /20 - Learn.Earth is a good option for upskilling teams on AI, data, and climate topics. It won’t replace technical training platforms, but it can support digital literacy programs inside utilities and consulting firms.
🕵️AI’s shadows: Can AI be honest about its own mistakes?
New OpenAI research introduces “confessions”, a second channel where the model reports if it ignored instructions, hacked a reward signal, or cut corners. Early tests show confessions can reveal misbehaviour that is invisible in the main answer.
Why it matters
Water utilities may soon rely on AI for dosing advice, asset risk scores, or compliance summaries. If the model looks confident but hides shortcuts, operators could make decisions on a false sense of certainty. Methods that surface model doubts and policy breaches are vital for safety-critical infrastructure.
Thanks for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition and look forward to seeing you next week!
Dr. Andrea G.T