Revolutionising Natural Capital Management: Affinity Water’s AI-Powered Approach

Affinity Water partnered with Atkins Réalis and AiDash to implement BNGAI™, an advanced AI-powered platform, to revolutionise its approach to natural capital management. By utilising remote sensing technology, BNGAI™ by AiDash enabled Affinity Water to efficiently collect, classify, and analyse environmental data across its extensive landholdings. This innovative approach transformed Affinity Water’s strategic decision-making, allowing the company to achieve its environmental objectives, streamline regulatory compliance, and set a new industry standard for natural capital management.

AiDash, with its advanced remote-sensing data collection methodology, Atkins Réalis, bringing their expertise in natural capital accounting, and Affinity Water, leveraging their deep knowledge and understanding of their extensive estate, formed a highly effective collaborative delivery team. Together, they combined cutting-edge technology, ecological expertise, and local insights to deliver a tailored solution for natural capital management. This partnership ensured that the data collected was not only accurate but also actionable, aligning seamlessly with Affinity Water’s strategic environmental objectives while enhancing the precision and relevance of the outcomes.

The Client:

Affinity Water is one of the largest water-only suppliers in the UK, serving over 3.8 million people across Southeast England. Committed to sustainability and innovation, Affinity Water places a strong emphasis on protecting and enhancing the natural environment.

The company has set ambitious goals for biodiversity and natural capital enhancement, aligned with its strategic objective of delivering a measurably improved environment. Through initiatives such as reducing water consumption, enhancing biodiversity, and adopting innovative technologies,

Affinity Water strives to balance the needs of its customers with the responsibility of preserving natural ecosystems. To achieve these goals, Affinity Water partnered with Atkins Réalis, a leader in natural capital accounting, to further strengthen its capabilities in managing environmental assets.

The Challenge:

Faced with the complex task of managing natural capital assets across 456 sites and 1,500 hectares, Affinity Water sought a scalable, efficient solution to gain a comprehensive understanding of its estate and integrate natural capital considerations into its decision-making processes.

Traditional methods of habitat assessment and natural capital accounting were slow, labour-intensive, and expensive, often taking up to two years for completion. The challenge was not only to streamline data collection but also to ensure compliance with stringent regulatory requirements like Ofwat’s Biodiversity Performance Commitment, all while driving sustainable and forward-looking environmental practices.

The company needed a scalable, efficient solution to gain a comprehensive understanding of its landholdings, integrate natural capital considerations into its decision-making, and support its commitment to delivering a measurably improved environment.

The Solution: BNGAI™ by AiDash

To address these challenges, Affinity Water turned to AiDash and its biodiversity management platform, BNGAI™. BNGAI™ combines advanced remote sensing technology with AI-driven analytics to provide high-resolution habitat classification and natural capital accounting, revolutionising how organisations assess and manage environmental assets. The platform offers a scalable alternative to manual surveys, allowing for remote data collection across vast areas, significantly reducing the time and costs associated with traditional methods.

The success of the project was driven by a collaborative approach that united the strengths of all three partners. AiDash provided cutting-edge AI and remote-sensing technology to enable efficient, large-scale environmental assessments. Atkins Réalis played a critical role by applying its deep expertise in natural capital accounting and ecological systems to analyse and interpret the collected data. Using established methodologies such as ENCA, NCRAT, and BS8632, Atkins Réalis ensured that the outputs aligned with industry standards and regulatory requirements. Affinity Water’s intimate knowledge of their estate provided essential on-the-ground insights to validate and refine the data, ensuring its practical applicability.

Together, this collaborative delivery team conducted a comprehensive survey of Affinity Water’s entire estate using high-resolution satellite imagery. The platform generated detailed habitat classifications across multiple systems, including EUNIS, JNCC Phase 1, and UKHab, tailored to Affinity Water’s specific needs. The data was integrated into Affinity Water’s operational frameworks, enabling precise measurement, tracking, and reporting of natural capital assets. Interactive workshops with Affinity Water’s teams, facilitated by Atkins Réalis, helped validate and refine the data, enhancing the accuracy of the habitat classifications and aligning them with the company’s environmental and operational goals.

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By harnessing AiDash’s advanced remote-sensing technology, we were able to produce high-resolution habitat classifications in just two months—a task that would typically take up to two years using traditional ground surveys.

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Outcomes:

BNGAI™ by AiDash delivered a comprehensive natural capital account of Affinity Water’s landholdings in just two months — a dramatic improvement over the traditional timeline of up to two years.

The platform’s AI-powered capabilities identified 6,800 unique habitats across 71 DEFRA BNG categories, providing Affinity Water with a robust, data-driven foundation for biodiversity enhancement and strategic natural capital management.

The insights from BNGAI™ by AiDash, complemented by the ecological expertise of Atkins Réalis, empowered Affinity Water to optimise resource allocation, streamline regulatory compliance processes, and make informed decisions that support its long-term environmental and sustainability targets.

Benefits:

The implementation of BNGAI™ by AiDash, with Atkins Réalis’ ecological expertise, resulted in significant time and cost savings for Affinity Water. By replacing manual, labour-intensive data collection with automated, AI-driven analysis, Affinity Water was able to rapidly scale its natural capital assessments across its extensive estate. The platform’s high-resolution data and advanced analytics, combined with Atkins Réalis’ interpretation and guidance, facilitated targeted ground-truthing surveys, allowing Affinity Water’s ecologists to focus on areas of strategic significance, thus optimising resources and improving the overall accuracy of the data.

Additionally, BNGAI™ by AiDash has become an integral part of Affinity Water’s decision-making processes. The platform’s insights, enriched by Atkins Réalis’ expertise, have been used in key initiatives, including biodiversity baseline assessments to meet Ofwat’s Biodiversity Performance Commitment requirements for the upcoming AMP, and in asset disposals to evaluate sites based on broader environmental criteria beyond standard market value.

BNGAI™ by AiDash also supports Affinity Water’s six-capitals approach to sustainability, enabling the integration of natural capital considerations into broader corporate strategies and sustainability reporting. This holistic approach ensures that Affinity Water’s environmental efforts are not only compliant but also strategically aligned with its corporate objectives and stakeholder expectations.

Key Statistics:

• Surveyed 456 sites covering 1,500 hectares in under three months.
• Utilised 50cm high-resolution satellite imagery to classify habitats.
• Identified 6,800 unique habitats across 71 DEFRA BNG categories.
• Estimated Natural Capital NPV: £9.14 billion over 100 years across all Affinity Water assets.
• BNGAI™ by AiDash outputs have been incorporated into key processes, including AMP8 Biodiversity Performance Commitment methodology and land disposals.

BNGAI™ by AiDash has set a new benchmark for natural capital management at Affinity Water, demonstrating the transformative power of AI and remote sensing technologies in environmental strategy. By achieving in months what traditionally takes years, BNGAI™ by AiDash has not only optimised Affinity Water’s operations but also paved the way for future innovations in sustainability and regulatory compliance. This project exemplifies how advanced data-driven solutions can drive impactful change in environmental management, positioning Affinity Water as a leader in the industry.

Discover how BNGAI™ by AiDash can transform your approach to natural capital management. Contact AiDash today to learn more about implementing AI-powered solutions for environmental and operational excellence.