Critical infrastructures – water networks, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, electricity networks or even public lighting – are undergoing a profound transformation driven by multiple factors.
Ronald Vrancken, EMD of the Environment activity at LACROIX, shares his vision of how these infrastructures are evolving under the effect of four major drivers: pressure on natural resources, technological innovations, rising cyber risks, and changing business models.
Lever no. 1: Growing pressure on natural resources
Sophie Puiseux: Climate change and population growth are putting increasing pressure on water and energy. According to the latest report from the European Environment Agency, water stress affects nearly 30% of European territory and 34% of its population each year. Natural disasters have doubled in 20 years… What impact does this have for players like LACROIX ?
Ronald Vrancken: Clearly, the preservation of natural resources such as water and energy is identified by all stakeholders as a priority.
In addition to the factors you mention, we can note the growing share of renewable energy in the energy mix, the increasing need for safety in our cities and rural areas strongly linked to public lighting management, but also the development of technologies that are highly resource-intensive, such as data centers, whose demand is exploding with the rise of artificial intelligence.
This situation calls for reinforced control of critical infrastructure networks, particularly in the water and energy sectors. Protecting and efficiently managing these resources is becoming a strategic priority for both public and private players. It is a driver of growth.
Lever no. 2: Accelerating technological transformation
Sophie Puiseux: Technological innovations are often presented as a response to resource protection. Is that accurate ?
Ronald Vrancken: At LACROIX, we are convinced that technology must help foster simple, sustainable and safer environments. In other words, technology is indeed part of the answer—but only if it generates a positive impact.
It is clear that technological developments are profoundly transforming monitoring systems: communication networks, software platforms, artificial intelligence… These innovations offer considerable opportunities.
They are a real asset both for our customers and for society: they enable real-time supervision, remote control, predictive maintenance, greater energy efficiency and better resource protection. But they also represent a challenge: their integration must address real market needs to be relevant, sustainable and secure.
At LACROIX, we evaluate the net real impact of our solutions across their full life cycle in order to quantify their benefits. We created our own methodology for quantifying benefits, inspired by ADEME’s “Project Footprint Method,” which allows us to precisely measure the environmental efficiency of our solutions. Concretely, we measure the difference between the energy required to develop, implement and operate a solution, and the benefits obtained thanks to it (water savings, energy savings, and therefore reduced bills!).
In a fast-changing environment, this rigorous approach is essential to guarantee responsible and useful innovation. For our customers, it is also a tool that contributes to measuring their ROI.
Lever no. 3: The growing need for protection
Sophie Puiseux: Cybersecurity has become a priority in almost every sector. What about critical infrastructure networks?
Ronald Vrancken: It is indeed a major issue. Threats are multiplying and, at the same time, the regulatory framework is becoming more stringent. The European NIS2 (Network & Information Systems 2) directive is a perfect illustration: it imposes reinforced security obligations to protect essential sectors (including water and energy).
To meet these requirements, solutions must enable the automation of equipment and user security, the management of large-scale updates, and the opening of secure interfaces to business applications such as supervision, data analysis or hypervision.
Trust in equipment and in the data they produce is becoming a central element. It is an essential added value for all stakeholders.
Our LX Connect centralization offering is a true turnkey solution. It helps simplify and automate cybersecurity measures such as:
- Automated security of equipment and users,
- Management of massive fleet updates,
- Opening secure interfaces to the operator’s business applications (SCADA, data analytics, artificial intelligence, hypervision, etc.) to provide reliable, useful and sufficient data.
Lever no. 4: Changing economic models
Sophie Puiseux: You also mention a change in business models. What does that mean in concrete terms?
Ronald Vrancken: La diversité des cas d’usage, des besoins et des acteurs – grands opérateurs publics ou privés, collectivités de toutes tailles – nous pousse à faire évoluer nos offres et nos modèles pour maximiser la valeur apportée à nos clients.
Il s’agit d’être plus résilient sur la chaîne de valeur, en France comme à l’international, de renforcer la place du service et de la satisfaction client, et de proposer des solutions interopérables, modulaires et faciles à déployer.
Cette évolution passe aussi par la proposition de nouveaux modes de commercialisation comme des solutions clé en main avec des offres en mode service (SaaS) et des modèles d’abonnement, qui permettent d’accompagner nos clients dans la durée, sans investissements initiaux lourds.
Ce changement de business model – d’une logique transactionnelle vers une logique de partenariat à long terme – est essentiel pour continuer à créer de la valeur dans un monde en pleine mutation.
Je suis persuadé que la donnée de terrain fiable et sécurisée est en train de devenir le véritable moteur de cette transformation.
Ce n’est plus seulement l’objet industriel qui compte, mais sa capacité à collecter, sécuriser et valoriser la donnée pour mieux piloter et protéger les réseaux.
Notre rôle évolue en conséquence et nous nous positionnons sur la chaîne de valeur en véritable partenaire de confiance dans la durée, garant de la qualité et de la valeur de la donnée.