5 Reasons Smart Water Utilities Need a Weather Station #4: DATA ANALYSIS

The idea of “Smart Water” involves the use of advanced technologies and data to improve operating efficiencies and maintain quality of life for constituents. Smart water utilities are adding Internet of Things (IoT) “assets” such as meteorological sensors to acquire data, in addition to traditional monitoring of flow, pressure, distribution, consumption. Meaningful and actionable data can be used for anomaly detection and control, as well as optimization and prediction.¹

• Weather information can be automatically monitored and archived for periodic and incident reporting.
• Historical data can be analyzed for process optimization, modeling and planning.
• Adaptations can be automated based on weather parameters for operations with minor fluctuations, as well as emergency measures based on extreme conditions.

According to Jonathon Sudar, of CUWCD, “Our weather data is collected through a PLC and then stored in a historian program where it can be represented graphically and reviewed. Some of the data (temp, wind speed, precipitation and solar) is exported and used for modeling purposes for our reservoirs. One example where the data is used is in our evaporation modeling.”²

Another example is handling overflows. Given certain precipitation parameters, such as accumulation and rate, combined sewage overflow (CSO) programs may divert excess flow to storage facilities so that they can process it at a more leisurely pace once a wet-weather event has subsided. Operational data can help make proactive decisions to predict and set up contingencies, for example to divert influent. “If you have the data that is collected, then you can use it to help your operations in a lot of different ways. You can better predict what’s going to happen and then manage those situations more effectively.”³

One final and emerging weather-sensitive area is energy-efficiency in all facilities. This is carried even further by the development of energy-recovery and production at some wastewater facilities. These trends are advanced by increasing regulations, tightening budgets, climate variability, and the popularity of concepts such as Zero-Liquid-Discharge. Once again, this is an area for resource optimization and automation based on meteorological factors such as precipitation in conjunction with inflow, wind speed and solar radiation for evaporation, and temperature for biological processes.⁴

With the integration/interoperability of city-wide agency systems, “Smart Water” plays a significant role and weather monitoring can be a part of it. Besides the water utility itself, facilities with weather monitoring equipment can serve as additional climatological data points to improve the “smartness” of other agencies such as public services and energy. According to Leinmiller and O’Mara, “Additional efficiencies are gained when departments are able to share relevant, actionable information.”⁵

All weather station models from CWS offer easy interface to SCADA systems, PLC, Modbus and a variety of other industrial interfaces, including 4-20 mA signal. Monitoring options also include Weather Master™ Software with database feature, Weather Display™ console which can be rack mounted, and the Cloud Weather Server for secure access from any Internet-enabled device.

Contact Columbia Weather Systems today to add a weather station or network of weather stations to your data assets.

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¹De Castro, Renato and Nav Krishna. (2018, May). The IoT Offers New Revenue Opportunities For Smart Cities. Smart and Resilient Cities. Retrieved from https://www.smartresilient.com/city-revenue-iot

²Columbia Weather Systems. Water Management: Central Utah Water Conservancy District. https://columbiaweather.com/applications/water-management/

³Emerson Process Management. How To Use SCADA To Avoid Overflows. Water Online. Retrieved from https://www.wateronline.com/doc/how-to-use-scada-to-avoid-overflows-0001

⁴Patel, Sonal. (2018, May). Upheaval and Innovation in Wastewater Management. Power.

⁵Leinmiller, Mark, and Melissa O'Mara (2013, December) Smart Water: A key building block of the smart city of the future. WaterWorld. Retrieved from https://www.waterworld.com/articles/print/volume-29/issue-12/water-utility-management/smart-water-a-key-building-block-of-the-smart-city-of-the-future.html