A Baseform tem orgulho em ser 100% detida e gerida pelos seus fundadores. Nasceu em Portugal, combinando anos de I&D aplicada no setor da água, em Portugal, Europa e EUA, com um percurso igualmente profundo em desenvolvimento computacional, para criar um produto específico para o setor da água.
Tem como visão democratizar e tornar acessível a todos o melhor que a tecnologia consegue fazer com os dados disponíveis, permitindo uma gestão transparente, rigorosa e racional da água na cidade.
Desde o início da Baseform em janeiro de 2015, conquistámos rapidamente uma posição de referência nos mercados onde estamos presentes. Devemo-lo essencialmente a não perder de vista algumas noções cruciais:
- as redes de água não são apenas conjuntos de ativos independentes, mas organismos apenas coletivamente fornecem um serviçoo – concentramos-nos em garantir que as EG possam garantir o serviço 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, hoje e no longo prazo;
- as infraestruturas públicas têm de durar muito para além de nós e dos nossos filhos, e as mudanças que cada geração tem ao seu alcance introduzir são muito limitadas;
- as ferramentas de software disponíveis no mercado – faturaçao, cadastro SIG, telegestão, manutenção – são ótimas nas suas respectivas funções, mas representam silos de dados, processos e fontes de informação que dificultam as decisões-chave;
- a operação diária concentra naturalmente as atenções da EG, uma vez que materializa a missão crítica que desempenha na cidade; mas as decisões operacionais, a eficiência de planejamento e os objetivos corporativos de longo prazo têm poucas oportunidades de se alinharem efetivamente, a menos que algo seja feito na raiz do problema.
Temos sido bem sucedidos em criar as condições para que as EGs possam fazer melhor uso dos dados que já coletam diariamente e direcionar as decisões-chave de curto e longo prazo com as métricas certas, incorporando-as na vida cotidiana.
O nosso site reflete um conjunto de ideias que formam o contexto para o software que disponibilizamos. Acreditamos firmemente que esta visão e o nosso software podem fazer a diferença, no setor da água mas também na forma como as cidades utilizam este recurso cada vez menos abundante. E não deixaremos de nos bater por explorar todos os melhores caminhos para isso, em benefício dos nossos clientes.
About cities
Metropolitan areas concentrate 80% of the US population today. In 30 years, the UN estimates the same proportion will apply to the entire globe. Designing and managing cities and their infrastructures has never been so complex, and crucial.
One thing is for sure, the existing designs and design praxis must be bettered. Cities are not collections of infrastructural assets, much less static landscapes. Cities are people and we at Baseform see them move and change throughout the day, week, season, year, across each urban area.
Cities are the greatest constraints to the delivery of an infrastructural service – utilities take on a challenge that is in reality a societal challenge. Public infrastructures are there to provide a service to city dwellers, essentially in the buildings where they live, work or play. Managing cities and their infrastructures is all about understanding citizens, the places where they dwell and the way they behave, across time and space, at all times.
Growing sensorization and ubiquitous data
Knowing is a lot better than believing. As sensors multiply, we can combine data sources like never before, to reach a better understanding of human behaviors and levels of activity around the city, throughout the day and the year.
Engineering, architecture and urban planning are undergoing a fundamental revolution, where instead of relying only on projected versions of reality as in the past few centuries (models, in 20th century jargon), we can now increasingly observe that reality in detail and continuously adapt the designed landscape, facilities, infrastructures to the changing needs and intensities.
As far as public water infrastructures go, those needs are evidently ever changing. Not just the emerging, uncertain challenges of climate change, energy crises and their ilk, but the actual everyday fact. The short movie above, extracted from our database of over 1500 years of human consumption in cities around the world, suggests how any static urban zoning or strategic plan can easily miss reality and become a problem rather than the solution.
Ailing infrastructure
The useful life of water infrastructure pipes may range from over a century to less than a couple of decades. Cities need to re-invest accordingly. Not doing so is like not paying a bank loan – it builds up. In the US alone, the current deferred investment gap is estimated to surpass $60bn. Most major cities, with infrastructures built many decades ago, experience issues such as water shortages, leakage, tariff increases, water quality hazards.
The massive investments which are inevitably needed require long-term vision and systematic, defendable and transparent planning processes.
The darker blue bars in the chart show annual investment in a US city’s public water infrastructure, from its inception in the 1950s. The initial investment is mostly incorporated in the price of housing and thus borne by the initial property buyers. The white bars show current annual maintenance & rehab expenditure, at adequate levels by industry standards.
What modern society by and large has not experienced yet, is the rebound of those investment booms, as large numbers of pipes reach the end of their service lives and must be replaced (bright blue bars). This time around, the cost will not be diluted elsewhere, and the city must find ways to face expenditure needs well above the current ‘good practice’ rehab rates.
Networked infrastructures are not simply collections of assets. Extracting the best service out of capital and operational expenditure is not the same as replacing older cars in a rental fleet. Networks behave like networks; relative position and function matter. In order to maximize expenditure efficiency, we need to take into consideration the finance, the risk, but also the performance, the hydraulics, and above all, the service, where it’s delivered, and its recipients.
Technology is hardly a silver bullet, but it can help. The key are clear objectives, a good notion of how to measure them, and the will to make the right decisions.