Water Utility Improves Water Quality Management by Integrating Four Software into One

Riverside Public Utilities was using four different software programs for water quality and data management.

The utility used WaterTrax for water quality management, OSISoft PI System to centralize data sourced from other business systems including SCADA, Esri GIS, and Asset Management/Work Order System (UWAM).

This left information compartmentalized and decentralized, making it hard for Riverside’s Water Quality Administrator to make decisions despite having access to real-time data.

Upper management had to manually extract data from each of the four software and create reports in order to understand it. This ate up precious resources and required users to have high expertise while utilizing these platforms.

Ultimately, the staff had access to robust data, but its segmentation made it difficult to organize and determine overall water system health. This hindered water administrators' ability to make effective, informed decisions, creating inefficiencies in the water system at large.

Riverside Public Utilities integrated their four software programs into one, giving water quality administrators a holistic view of their water system samples.

Housing the data in one system provides a comprehensive overview of Riverside Public Utilities' distribution system samples, treatment plant process control samples, and groundwater well samples. The data automatically funnels into a centralized system has made the process of data compilation and report generation significantly more efficient.

Riverside Public Utilities used Aquatic Informatics' WaterTrax API to seamlessly and securely integrate its previous systems with it's 3rd party systems -- BI tools, CMMS, GIS and more.

The integration creates visual displays from the PI System that automatically updates when new data becomes available, allowing management to view the dashboards in real-time. The dashboard contains combined information from SCADA and UWAM, centralizing all data in one place.

Riverside Public Utilities' groundwater wells and treatment facility effluents blend prior to entering the distribution system. Real time data from SCADA is integrated in a Blend Model dashboard, where over 500 calculations run real time and show operators the blend at each transmission main, as well as when entering the distribution system. If there is a change to the blend that exceeds the established set points, the water quality team gets an email or text message alert. The operational team can quickly provide corrective action before endangering public health.

Water quality data from WaterTrax and service requests from UWAM are plotted on a map in ESRI GIS and displayed on a dashboard, allowing staff to quickly prioritize actions. With the visual representation of data, administrators can see the location of service calls alongside chlorine residuals and compare historical and real-time data for trend analysis and forecasting. With greater system visibility, management can better allocate personnel for quicker response times.

“The API integration has really improved our ability to quickly make decisions based on real time data”, said Robin Glenney, Water Quality Administrator at Riverside Public Utilities. “The advantage of combining information from SCADA, UWAM, and WaterTrax gives us the big picture in one place and allows us to improve performance and operational efficiency,” Glenney concluded.