At the turn of the last century, a major shift in the way business is conducted was underway in the world--the shift was outsourcing. The concept was discussed by Thomas L Friedman in his book “The World Is Flat – The Globalized World in the Twenty First Century”. There is now another movement similar to outsourcing which is further increasing the efficiency of companies – the application of artificial intelligence to enhance and support decision makers to do things faster, better and cheaper. In this paper, we draw a comparison between outsourcing and artificial intelligence.

When applied to the water industry, the different forms of AI such as genetic algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization and neural networks are enhancing the planning, design and operations of water systems like never before.