Water Online

November 2015

Water Online the Magazine gives Water & Wastewater Engineers and end-users a venue to find project solutions and source valuable product information. We aim to educate the engineering and operations community on important issues and trends.

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"Sometimes on the service orders, it may say some something like [the meter is] in the left rear or on the right side of a property, very general information about the location of the meter," said Mark Head, field services manager. "The GIS gives them a picture of where the meter should be located and the user's position relative to the asset location." Field personnel can pull customer account details from the GIS app, saving additional time. Consumption history, cus- tomer contact information, meter type and installation history, service order history, and other account details can be gathered and studied in a few seconds in the field as com- pared to many minutes or hours previously. Users can also analyze consumption trends for a customer (or an aggregate of the neigh- borhood) to see if there has been a spike in water usage, potentially indicating a leak at the residence. In the near future, users will be able to compare the customer consumption data with SCADA data to help identify local- ized water loss in the system. Charting The Future Building GIS applications that leverage data from several IT systems is just the begin- ning. At this point, the Service Authority has made tremendous strides to make exist- ing workflows more efficient. The next challenge is finding ways to analyze the vast amounts of utility data in new ways to expand data-driven decision-making. Quantitatively measuring asset risk at the individual asset level to improve risk-based planning and forecasting could provide a vari- ety of benefits. Examples include CIP (capital improvement plan) repair-and-replace plan- ning to determine what CIP plan will yield the lowest risk number at the least cost to ratepayers over time, greater precision with preventative maintenance planning to target high-risk assets first, and refined asset deterioration curves based on empirical data mapped in a GIS environment. "By assigning a risk score to each asset, based on the consequence of failure of that asset and the likelihood that an asset will fail, the Service Authority will be in a much better position to precisely target CIP repair- and-replacement planning to maximize the positive impact of every dollar spent," stated Pfleckl. The Service Authority is committed to operating as a best-in-class utility, and GIS technology is a centerpiece of that vision. As GIS data, workflows, and applications evolve, the EAM team will integrate addi- tional systems and provide new ways of analyzing data. n wateronline.com n Water Innovations PIPELINEMAINTENANCE 13 Innovative Chemical Feed Solutions * * NEW PRODUCT * * Model 4100-EC Automatic Liquid Vacuum Feeder Feed the following chemicals safely under vacuum conditions: Sodium Hypochlorite / Sodium BisulÞte / Liquid Ammonium Sulfate / Sodium Chlorite / Hydroßuorosilicic Acid / Copper Sulfate Solution / Poly Aluminum Chloride / Liquid Aluminium Sulfate / Sulfuric Acid / Hydrochloric Acid / Emulsion Polymers Kipp Hanley is a copywriter for the Prince William County Service Authority. About The Author A screenshot from Prince William County Service Authority's GIS- based Work Order History app

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