Integrating water data collection & data management

The challenge

As the OCWA’s existing Process Data Collection System (PDC) was reaching the end of its useful life, another solution was required. The agency needed a reliable software platform capable of handling an enormous amount of times series water data, and also provide an efficient way for stakeholders to consume the information.

Systems considerations included:

• Streaming more than 20,000 SCADA tags daily
• Interfacing with more than 100 labs daily
• Tracking 50,000+ lab samples daily
• Integrating mobile data collection
• Allowing 1,500+ operators to input/enter data
• Supporting 100+ compliance officers certifying data

The solution

A pilot project was required to demonstrate that Water Information System by KISTERS (WISKI) was an integrated solution capable of achieving OCWA’s aims.

The proof-of-concept specifications included:

• Streaming real-time data from SCADA, mobile devices and LIMS
• Enabling a user-specific configuration for site, station, parameter and time series relationships to manage all incoming data
• Providing two standard report formats to meet existing Ontario government reporting requirements.

Two large facilities, Peel and Belleville, were selected for the pilot project. As the first sites to go into production, their challenges represented those across all other facilities.

Multiple workshops were scheduled to determine the best way to present the information required by OCWA and its stakeholders. For widespread adoption by the water & wastewater operators, the WISKI interface needed to look-and-feel like the existing PDC for implementation of the new solution.

KISTERS accommodated operator needs by extending a customizable input mask and dashboard, which provided each operator with the ability to easily and efficiently fulfill day-to-day tasks from data entry to reporting.

The benefits

For the pilot test, WISKI was configured to run automatically and notify more than 100 compliance officers of more than 20,000 daily SCADA tags. Consequently the WISKI Platform provided automated daily alerts to threshold exceedances, allowing for more rigorous assessment of real-time data quality.

After the completion of the pilot project in March, 2013 a successful rollout across 750 facilities and training with more than 1,800 users was conducted.