Tag Archives: Flow analysis

FlowWorks Graphic Editing QA/QC Tools

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FlowWorks graphic data editing and QA/QC tools make it possible to edit any and all data, on a single secure web platform, from anywhere. Designed by power users from the FlowWorks community, the editing tools combine the game-changing FACE (FlowWorks Advanced Calculation Engine) with an intuitive interface designed to make short work of data editing. Using the tools, analysts and data managers can select data directly on graphs and tables to delete or modify it including applying offsets, interpolation and much more. A complete history of all edits is stored in the permanent record so reviewing data across multiple hardware platforms has never been easier.

The new FlowWorks Graphic Editing QA/QC tools make it easy to:

  • Quickly select data channels to edit
  • Select data points directly by drawing boxes on time-series graphs or scatter-graphs, using date range selection tools, or through direct entry of dates and times
  • Raw data is always protected from editing – editing tools make it easy to save edited data to new records
  • Find and replace missing data
  • Apply corrections to ranges of data, or to individual data points
  • Make quick work of simple operations such as nulling invalid data, applying constants and linearly varying ramps, and data substitution.
  • Automatically create and edit QA/QC flags
  • View and make direct edits in the tabular data display
  • Add notes to document your edits, which can be displayed on the graphical interface

One-stop data editing – all part of the power of FlowWorks.

Quantifying I&I with FlowWorks

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If you are responsible for operating a sanitary sewer system, you know tracking Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) is crucial. However, even with the best data this can be a challenging and sometimes tedious task without the tools to extract useful information from it. This is where FlowWorks comes in.

You have stations monitoring sewers and rainfall all over the city. The challenge for planners and engineers is to use this data to predict I&I in order to implement the required facilities or assess the results of infrastructure rehabilitation. To do this, a host of data is considered and some complex and often tedious calculations are undertaken. The versatile I&I tools in FlowWorks simplify many of the tasks required in I&I analysis, preventing errors and making the task actually tolerable (we won’t go so far as to say enjoyable!)  For those of us who used to do all of this in Excel spreadsheets, the first time you see FlowWorks do in seconds what used to take hours can be very exciting!. The program has already helped municipalities and consultants avoid potential overflows and resulting fines, which can come at a high cost to both the local environment and community.

For each storm event, FlowWorks takes into account Ground Water Infiltration (GWI) and Base Sanitary Flow (BSF), collectively known as Dry Weather Flow (DWF), and subtracts it from the total flow in the sanitary sewer to come up with Rainfall Induced I&I (RDII). This may not sound like a lot of effort, but when it has to be done manually across many stations and storm events it can easily add up to many hours of grueling, error-prone calculations.

Once you’ve accumulated an adequate number of storm events, FlowWorks will quickly handle plotting of an I&I envelope or the Q vs I relationship, giving you the relationship between I&I and rainfall so that return-period based I&I flows can be estimated.

All I&I analysis data can be saved for later reference or comparison and can be published for any audience, public or private. For those who have multiple monitoring sites, a seasonal set up, which includes dates of storms, dry weather patterns, etc., can be easily transferred between sites to avoid the hassles of setting up multiple sites.

If you haven’t tried out the I&I tools yet on some of your data, we encourage you to give it a try (use of the I&I tools is included in your subscription).

FlowWorks Now Links Directly to USGS & NOAA Data

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FlowWorks can now accept real-time data directly from United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitoring stations.

For the first time ever, utilities, municipalities, and industrial clients can access this valuable data directly through FlowWorks to enhance understanding of their regional environment.

The addition of the USGS and NOAA data means over 2,500 precipitation stations, 9,000 stream flow stations, 1,300 groundwater level stations and 1,900 surface water quality stations and nearly 50 tide stations are now available to FlowWorks clients in real time.

Clients can use the new data to augment local networks, or simply as a means of cross-checking local monitoring results.  For example, enhancing an existing rain gauge network with local USGS rainfall stations will increase spatial and temporal storm information and improve correlation with observations on the ground.  FlowWorks stores all data in a single massive database so it can be analyzed quickly, understood and the results communicated to all users.  It’s now just keystrokes away and the benefits are impressive.

You can read more about using FlowWorks with USGS and NOAA data here.

FlowWorks: A True One-Stop Monitoring Shop

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Flow monitoring must be efficient in order to truly be effective. With that in mind, FlowWorks continues to promote the ease of accessing all data sources in one location. We now have the ability to add real-time United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) station data into our already- robust flow monitoring network.

The additional data is comprehensive:

  • Precipitation
  • Groundwater level
  • Streamflow
  • Surface water quality
  • Tide data

The upgrades bring more than 2,500 USGS precipitation stations, 9,000 streamflow stations, 1,300 groundwater level stations and 1,900 surface water quality stations to FlowWorks users. And, NOAA allows access to almost 50 real-time tide data streams. It’s all just keystrokes away. For a list of available stations in your area click here for USGS and here for NOAA.

This real-time data is typically recorded at 15- to 60-minute intervals, stored onsite, and then transmitted to USGS offices every one to four hours, depending on the data relay technique used. Recording and transmission times may be more frequent during critical events. Plus, data from real-time sites are relayed to USGS offices via satellite, telephone, and/or radio telemetry and are available for viewing within minutes of arrival.

The benefits are impressive. In essence, FlowWorks analysis and reporting tools enable more useful information to be captured from the USGS stations. For example, clients are able to enhance their existing rain gauge network with all available stations in their monitoring area, which increases access to spatial and temporal storm information.

Gwinnett County in Georgia is using this service to bring the 18 local USGS rainfall stations into their FlowWorks platform in addition to the 12 rainfall stations coming in from their SCADA system.  The result will be a dramatic improvement in their understanding of local rainfall conditions.

Implementing these new features—additional data—from FlowWorks requires just a small one-time setup fee and no monthly charges. More importantly, accessing all your data in one spot, and in real time, will improve the decision-making process perhaps more than any other upgrade a firm could make.

FlowWorks in the UK

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FlowWorks Team Makes a Splash at the WaPUG Autumn Conference

The FlowWorks team is home after a successful trip to the United Kingdom for the Wastewater Planning Users Group (WaPUG) conference.

The primary topic for discussion during the two-day wastewater and urban drainage event in Blackpool was “What does the future hold—the next five years.”

FlowWorks President Timothy Hicks flew into the UK a few days ahead of time for meetings and to attend the Water, Wastewater and Environmental Monitoring (WWEM) tradeshow in Telford before picking up FlowWorks Operations Manager Craig Kipkie at the Manchester Airport. The English roads made for adventure as the two missed the turn onto the M6 and found themselves traversing the rural roads of the Wirral. After some hasty map reading, they made it through the Mersey Tunnel and onto the streets of Liverpool, where they were able to locate an excellent pub set against the back wall of Goodison park. Once they were fed, it made for a fun and scenic excursion, Hicks said.

Safe and sound in Blackpool, the FlowWorks team met up with colleagues from Detectronic and IETG, owned by ADS, the firm’s partner in the Seattle Public Utilities Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project. There was much discussion about upcoming projects and plans for using FlowWorks.

Hicks and Kipkie led numerous demonstrations, including what was easily the largest demonstration of the show Thursday evening when they shared online data, live via the FlowWorks site, to a crowd of about 20. The team continued to offer demonstrations and answer questions even as the show was being cleaned up around them on the last day.

Craig Kipkie demonstrates how to use FlowWorks data analysis tools on live field data.

Craig Kipkie demonstrates how to use FlowWorks data analysis tools on live field data.

The team also spent time with Detectronic and IETG folks, teaching them the inner workings of the FlowWorks platform—so much so that both firms have been designated as FlowWorks Technical Experts since they now possess a depth of knowledge about the tools and how to effectively employ them.

“All in all, it was a fabulous trade show,” Hicks said. “Three days of really good conference.”

The tradeshow was a unique opportunity to connect with the UK market. The market is highly sophisticated, since the level of modeling going on nationwide is uniformly high and very different from that of the United States because it is operated by ten large, privatized water boards. The result is that all firms in the industry are working ultimately for one or more of the ten water boards.

Craig Kipkie of FlowWorks and Ian Small of Mott MacDonald discuss the details of FlowWorks CSO management tools.

Craig Kipkie of FlowWorks and Ian Small of Mott MacDonald discuss the details of FlowWorks CSO management tools.

Hicks highlighted plenty of positives, weather aside, and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, he said,

“We had a really great show and met exactly the people we needed to meet and had great conversations and demonstrations with many of them. The people were awesome, the food was great, the venue was good for the purpose, Blackpool was marginally acceptable and the weather was awful. Short of fixing the weather and attracting so many more of the RIGHT kind of attendees that the event outgrows Blackpool, I am not sure the organizers could have done anything more”

Look for FlowWorks at the WaPUG Conference again next year.

How can FlowWorks help with Combined Sewage Overflow Monitoring?

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There’s a good website I found called about Combined Sewage Overflows, I’m going to shamelessly pull some of the writing from it for this blog entry.

The definition of a combined sewer overflow (CSO), from Water Environment Federation Manual of Practice FD-17: Prevention and Control of Sewer System Overflows is: “A CSO is the intentional or unintentional discharge of untreated sanitary wastewater mixed with stormwater runoff or snow melt and occurs when the carrying capacity of a single conveyance system is exceeded by the instantaneous rate of flow within the single conveyance system. To control where overflows occur, engineers design diversion structures at strategic locations within the single conveyance system that ultimately discharge extraneous commingled flow to receiving waters.”

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed a national framework in the United States for control of CSOs called the ‘Combined Sewer Overflow Control Policy’. The Policy was developed through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program, which requires that all point sources discharging pollutants to surface waters must have a permit. The CSO Control Policy provides information on how to meet the pollution control goals of the Clean Water Act flexibly and cost-effectively. The Policy, published in 1994, contains four fundamental principles to ensure that CSO controls are cost-effective and meet local environmental objectives:

  • Clear levels of control to meet health and environmental objectives
  • Flexibility to consider the site-specific nature of CSOs and find the most cost-effective way to control them
  • Phased implementation of CSO controls to accommodate a community’s financial capability
  • Review and revision of water quality standards during the development of CSO control plans to reflect the site-specific wet weather impacts of CSOs3.

As part of the CSO Control Policy, all communities with combined sewer systems were required to implement ‘nine minimum controls’ by January 1, 1997. These controls are measures that can be implemented to reduce the effect of CSOs without large engineering studies. The ‘nine minimum controls’ are summarized below:

  • Proper operation and regular maintenance programs for the sewer system and the CSOs
  • Maximum use of the collection system for storage
  • Review and modification of pre-treatment requirements to assure CSO impacts are minimized
  • Maximization of flow to the publicly owned treatment works for treatment
  • Prohibition of CSOs during dry weather
  • Control of solid and floatable materials in CSOs
  • Pollution prevention
  • Public notification to ensure that the public receives adequate notification of CSO occurrences and CSO impacts.

So it’s not surprising that one of the biggest uses that we see for FlowWorks is clients who are looking for cost-effective monitoring and reporting of CSO’s. The equipment to do this is now WAY cheaper than it used to be, so much so that it’s now possible to instrument overflow manholes or chambers with battery powered, underground wireless level equipment for about the same price that just the basic programmable logic controller (PLC) would cost in a traditional SCADA system. As a result, putting monitors in every overflow location is now within striking distance of cities that have even modest funding available. We are seeing clients instrument their overflow points with ultrasonic level sensors, pressure transducers, and even good old-fashioned float switches. There are even some amazing load-rated all-in-one monitoring manhole lids available on the market!

Once you have those locations instrumented, watching near-realtime data coming into FlowWorks is where the real fun begins. When all is well, you see all of the locations as green symbols on the FlowWorks map. When levels are nearing critical values the symbols switch to orange, and finally to red as the event begins. At several stages before and during the event, FlowWorks will issue alarm emails and text messages to everyone that needs to know. At anytime during or after the event, the FlowWorks graphing and reporting functions can tell you how long the event was. Plus, if the station is setup correctly you can get an estimate of how much overflow volume has been spilled.

It’s even possible for us to customize the reporting functions to match the exact format and requirements of your regulatory agency. After the events are over, a few mouse clicks is all it takes to produce the CSO overflow duration and volume reports to meet your regulatory obligations.