Tag Archives: Real-time data

FACE: FlowWorks Advanced Calculation Engine

Posted on by

The one-stop data management platform has arrived. A major new upgrade to the FlowWorks data platform places the power of the FlowWorks Advanced Calculation Engine (FACE) directly into user’s hands.

FACE gives FlowWorks a set of real-time data manipulation tools allowing users to create and define new data channels out of incoming channels using advanced math, statistics and logic equations. Now users can create, edit, delete and combine data channels with powerful mathematical functions for sophisticated real-time analysis. All part of the power of FlowWorks.

Included in FACE:

  • All the standard mathematical functions needed to combine and manipulate values across all sites and channels
  • Tools to define lookup tables for weirs, flumes, pipe cross-sectional areas and other physical constraints and map them to data channels
  • Conditional logic statements (IF…THEN…ELSE) to branch your calculations to other levels of complexity as needed
  • Tools to create rolling averages and sums, and set up sophisticated alarm rules based on those values to monitor specific events across multiple stations
  • Functions to create true time-weighted averages of irregularly spaced data
  • Tools to turn irregularly spaced time-series data into clean, continuous datasets of 5-minute, hourly, daily, or any other calculated interval
  • Advanced rainfall conversion functions to turn ANY rainfall data type (cumulative, event-based, time-interval) directly into 5-minute, hourly, daily, or other rainfall interval desired.
  • Tools to move data forward or backward in time to compare it with previously collected datasets
  • The ability to define constants, apply linearly varying offsets, and much more

FACE: Think of it as an Excel-quality calculation tool for real-time data analysis.

Quantifying I&I with FlowWorks

Posted on by
Reply

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).

Seattle Public Utilities Joins FlowWorks

Posted on by
Reply

FlowWorks is proud to announce a new partnership with Seattle Public Utilities and ADS Environmental Services to provide the city’s new flow-monitoring services. As part of the new combined sewer overflow (CSO) program, we will work closely with the city and ADS to oversee flow monitoring and data management.

SPU chose FlowWorks because of our proven ability to gather data into one place so CSO events can be analyzed quickly, understood and communicated to all users. Operating in near-real time, SPU’s new FlowWorks service easily loads two years of 5-minute data from the server in under 6 seconds. Already the city is enjoying better collaboration, faster problem solving and quicker response times.

Other highlights our service brings to the new partnership include:

• Secure, internet-based platform
• Used for gathering, analyzing and managing water, sewer, rainfall and other remote data Hardware neutral
• Accepts data from any flow meter or manufacturer’s data system, as well as SCADA, Historic and manual data
• Includes powerful graphing engine, storage for all forms of meta data, event alarms and analysis capabilities for I&I and rainfall IDF

ADS develops and provides technology-based flow measurement products and services for the water, wastewater and hydroelectric industries. The firm is a veteran of working with SPU and has provided excellent flow servicing, engineering, and a high degree of data integrity to the utility for the past five years. When the contract came up for re-bid, SPU leadership recognized the need to add a robust data-delivery and work order management system to the program—FlowWorks was a natural choice. Already the team of FlowWorks and ADS has proven to be exactly what SPU was looking for and together we help to build on past success with SPU.

FlowWorks continually proves to be the platform of choice for municipalities, utilities and industrial clients seeking to manage, analyze and understand large quantities of remote data quickly, and securely communicate the results to a broad audience.

For more information, please visit our website at www.flowworks.com or to learn more about ADS visit www.adsenv.com.

How can FlowWorks help with Combined Sewage Overflow Monitoring?

Posted on by
Reply

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.