Towards Smart Cities: AI and SAP for Integrated Urban Water and Waste Management

Abstract

Rapid urbanisation is placing unprecedented stress on municipal water distribution and solid waste management systems, while simultaneously generating vast quantities of sensor, operational, and citizen data that intelligent systems can exploit. This article examines how the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and SAP enterprise software—particularly SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), SAP AI Core, SAP IoT, and the Joule generative AI copilot—can enable city administrations and utility operators to transition from reactive infrastructure management to proactive, data-driven intelligent urban services. We map AI techniques including time-series deep learning, computer vision, anomaly detection, and reinforcement learning against specific water and waste management use cases: demand forecasting, non-revenue water reduction, real-time quality monitoring, predictive asset maintenance, dynamic waste collection routing, automated material recovery, and biogas yield optimisation