Data driven strategies and recommendations for Water Utilities
13 August, 2018Where to apply Data Analytics in Water Utilities: Operations
15 August, 2018
Theory is quite good sometimes. Previous posts about this subject, Data Analytics applied to Water Utilities, have been possibly too generalist. But they are necessary if we want to understand the recommendations I’m going to provide you here. It’s time to go deep in then.
We know why already. We also know the potential benefits. Let’s talk about how to and where I’m going to apply such a valuable technology. In despite the high detail of the exercise, I don’t pretend to provide a bible or complete list of things to promote into the Water Utilities to become a Data-Driven organization, step by step. This is more like a guide to everybody who wants to begin to draw a consistent strategy with any background about Data Analytics. This would be the right way to start the needed deeper change in the organization to guarantee the success of any Data-oriented project.
So, to make my choice among all the possible cases I’ve balanced two basic topics: the potential value for society and environment of each one, and their “time-to-market” considering the state of the art of the technology behind. This is, try to find what could be more valuable first for the company. Fantasies later.
I’ve spoken in some other posts about how hard is move these data initiatives forward without a change in persons, processes or tools. But reality is even cruel. Water industry doesn’t have the proper data to start to work with. In fact, we don’t have enough sensitivity to understand we’re not gathering, treating and loading the necessary data to response all the questions I’ve prepared for each case. And that’s the problem’s origin we need to stop immediately. So, perhaps instead of investing a huge amount of money in revolutionary and promising data initiatives, it’s time to look at the state of your data and put the money on better collection processes, data enhancement initiatives and data governance strategies.
So, in this post we’ll focus on Urban Cycle phases, including resource management, drainage, water supply and wastewater.
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Regarding Resource Management matters, the main efforts should focus on analyzing the state of our water sources, predicting demand in the medium-long term and recommending how optimize plant processes.
Recommended actions for DESCRIPTIVE analysis – What happened?
Quantification of water sources
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- How much water is available in our sources?
- What’s the trend? Going up? Decreasing?
- Is it higher or lower than expected at this season? Is it anomalously low or high? How much?
Qualitative analysis of water sources
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- What is the qualitative state of our sources?
- Which source is worse than others? Which are the wrong parameters?
- Are they below any quality standards?
- Has water quality been progressively lowered or are just specific outlets? In which periods do it normally happen
Recommended actions for PREDICTIVE analysis – What will happen?
Quantitative and qualitative prediction of water sources
- Key indicators
- Available water resources amount
- Available water resources quality condition
- Key questions
- Am I facing an extreme event? Drought? Pollution episode? Floods?
- What kind of symptoms can early advise me?
- What gravity may I expect?
- What will be the sources availability in those cases?
Water collection economic optimization
- Key indicators
- Water collection and purification cost
- Short and mid Water demand
- Key questions
- What’s the water collection associated cost? Is it going to go up or down?
- What is the ratio between internal -wells and others- and external sources?
- How does it impact on the overall exploitation? When should I do something to counteract a potential negative impact?
- What’s the optimal combination point to be 100% sustainable?
Recommended actions for PRESCRIPTIVE analysis – What should I do to make it happen?
Alternative sources analysis and benchmarking
- Key indicators
- Water demand
- Water usage
- Water production
- Key questions
- What’s the long-term water demand forecast?
- In case of an event that makes decrease my water availability level, how can I minimize the impact previously? And during the event?
- When should I start acting? What factors or parameters are going to advise me?
- How should operational, economic, environmental or demographic factors be combined?
Regenerated water usage optimization
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- Which is the current percentage of regenerated water usage in my operation? Which is the goal?
- Where can I increase the usage of this kind of water? Which kind of tasks?
- How much I must invest to achieve this goal? How can I plan the execution and return of that investment?
- Which are the quantifiable benefits I could share with the citizens?
DRAINAGE
Regarding Drainage matters, the main efforts should focus on optimizing network cleaning strategies and plans, analyzing and characterizing anomalies in the drainage network and optimizing operation under storm episodes.
Recommended actions for DESCRIPTIVE analysis – What happened?
Analysis of drainage network condition
- Key indicators
- Network cleaning rate
- Number of incidents
- Money destined to ease incidents impact
- Key questions
- Where do I have more problems on the network?
- What is the relation between water blockage, storm events and network cleaning rate? Is it direct or indirect? Is it quantifiable?
- How often do I execute cleaning operations on the net? Where am I concentrating the efforts now?
- What’s the relation between maintenance operations and blockage rate in my network?
- How is affecting the “baby wipes” toilet epidemic? May I demonstrate its negative impact for society? May I quantity if properly?
Recommended actions for PREDICTIVE analysis – What will happen?
Network condition forecasting
- Key indicators
- Blockage and overflow risk
- Key questions
- According to the network condition, where do I envisage having more incidents?
- How this risk is distributed along the network?
- How should I do prioritize my cleaning plan to minimize this risk smartly?
- Am I ready to take on these changes in my daily operation?
Recommended actions for PRESCRIPTIVE analysis – What should I do to make it happen?
Operation simulation to correctly face severe events
- Key indicators
- Flood risk
- Meteo indicators
- Key questions
- Where should I do lace my storm tanks? How should they be built in order to minimize the risk to an acceptable minimum according to probability and impact?
- Are the any alternative actions we can take before that option? How does it affect to my network?
- Regarding historical data, how often do I expect these events? What is the forecast for next one?
Storm operation strategy optimization
- Key indicators
- Storm forecasting
- Current efficiency operation level in front of flood events
- Key questions
- What are the thresholds to start acting in case of severe rains? Are they well calculated?
- How should do I deal with this type of alarms?
- Is my operation ready for it? What changes should I make to increase feasibility?
WATER SUPPLY
Regarding Water Supply matters, the main efforts should focus on predicting water leakages, predicting short-term water demand, simulating the water quality distribution and optimizing water balances.
Recommended actions for DESCRIPTIVE analysis – What happened?
WDN performance analysis
- Key indicators
- WDN level
- Non revenue water
- Key questions
- What’s my WDN performance? How is distributed per DMA?
- How has it evolved over time?
- Do I have a real benefit if I measure WDN daily? And what about hourly?
Water quality analysis
- Key indicators
- Water quality
- Water mix on the network
- Key questions
- Are we strictly complying all sanitary regulations? Are any warning quality alert in short-term?
- How does water quality evolve along the network? Are there any trend I need to be worry about?
- What’s the evolution of water mix over the network?
Recommended actions for DIAGNOSTIC analysis – Why it happened?
Network condition impact analysis over water service continuity
- Key indicators
- Water supply service inactivity time
- Breakdown rate by different segments
- Key questions
- Where and at what time are breakages and breakdowns concentrated? And planned cut-offs?
- How do both types of problems affect the service? How have they evolved?
- How can I minimize this condition? What kind of alternatives may I use in waterlocks?
- What breakdowns type does affect the most? How am I responding to them? And in a preventive mode?
Recommended actions for PREDICTIVE analysis – What will happen?
Water demand forecasting
- Key indicators
- Water demand
- Water production cost
- Key questions
- How much water should I produce in the short-term? And mid-term?
- How do different factors affect my forecast calculation? Is it reliable? How can I increase this rate?
- What’s entire water production process cost? May I minimize this cost without an environmental or guarantee impact on the service?
WDN qualitative condition forecasting
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- According to network monitoring, where am I most likely to have chlorine problems?
- When do these conditions usually occur?
- What is the short and mid-term event forecast?
- How can I react to minimize the risk?
Recommended actions for PRESCRIPTIVE analysis – What should I do to make it happen?
Water loss reduction and leak detection optimization
- Key indicators
- WDN level
- Technical loss rate
- Leakage rate by different segments
- Key questions
- Where are the most likely places to suffer a water leak? When do they get used to producing? Under what circumstances?
- According to WDN performance evolution, where should I focus to reduce technical loss rate?
- How should I change my strategy to maximize leak detection?
- From a different perspective, how should I prioritize this strategy? Economic? Environmental? Operational?
WASTE WATER
WWTP Operation analysis
- Key indicators
- WWTP operation indicators
- WWTP processes efficiency
- Key questions
- What are the KPIs that better monitor my WWTP operation?
- May I characterize the depuration process performance with these indicators? How should I combine them?
- How do these indicators evolve? What trends do I observe?
- What's the environmental impact of my malfunction?
Reuse rate analysis
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- What's the ratio between produced, purified and reused water? How does this ratio evolve?
- Do they match up correctly with my usage planning? Am I deviated from what I planned? Why?
- What's the additional cost incurred by the reused water related to the purified water?
Recommended actions for DIAGNOSTIC analysis – Why it happened?
Effluents qualitative condition forecast
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- What's the effluent quality that I'm returning to the environment? How has it evolved? Better? Worse?
- The relationship between process used, chemical reagents usage and the effluent, may I model it correctly?
- What's the proportional impact of my effluent on the natural environment condition? And considering other impacts?
WW network overflows analysis
- Key indicators
- Network Overflows rate
- Network Overflows frequency
- Key questions
- Where are the overflows concentrated in time?
- Under what conditions have they occurred? What factors can explain them better? Constructive? Weather?
- Is there any temporal or spatial pattern that can explain them?
Water pollution events analysis
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- When do I usually fail to meet international and national quality standards thresholds?
- What factors are most relevant in order to breaking these? What was the reason?
- Are all factors I can control directly? What are the indirect ones? How much do they contribute?
- How much contribute the city industries in that equation?
Recommended actions for PREDICTIVE analysis – What will happen?
Pollutant load forecasting
- Key indicators
- Pollutant load quantification
- Key questions
- According to my sewage network topology, where's the pollutant load concentrated?
- How will evolve facing behavioral and structural changes in the Smart city?
- How should I adapt my chemical and operational processes to those changes?
Recommended actions for PRESCRIPTIVE analysis – What should I do to make it happen?
Treatment cost comparative analysis and optimization
- Key indicators
- Key questions
- How should I modify my treatment processes to optimize the entire cost? Where are the biggest deviations?
- Does it have a process component? Geographical maybe?
