India Is Onto Something!

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Nadine Caouette

Balaji Automation, an Indian manufacturer and supplier of auto and electrical control systems, is now offer SCADA control panels that can be connected to FlowWorks. From their website:

Indeed, “FlowWorks is not just for data loggers and does a lot more than store and plot data”! Readers know that FlowWorks is a collaborative data management platform that can be used to combine environmental data with SCADA data to help make sense of it all. Once all the data is together, it can easily be monitored and alarmed across all inputs including SCADA inputs. Users can even set and acknowledge notifications and alarms from anywhere via a secure internet connection without needing to involve IT. Once connect, users can access the FlowWorks reporting tools to produce graphs and summary tables for reports including water consumption, water quality, rainfall statistics and IDF curves, pump run times, chemical injection summaries, etc. from their SCADA data.

And most importantly, FlowWorks provides data viewing and analysis tools only. There are none of the control functions typically associated with SCADA. When engineers and managers are viewing SCADA data in FlowWorks from your SCADA system, it is a mirrored copy of the data rather than the original data itself. Your SCADA system and network remain secure – always.

You can read more about using FlowWorks with your SCADA system here.

A True One-Stop Monitoring Shop

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Craig Kipkie

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.

Seattle Public Utilities Joins FlowWorks

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Craig Kipkie

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.

Using FlowWorks with SCADA

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Jason Vine

Making an Operator’s Life Simple

SCADA control room

Did you know that you can connect your existing SCADA system to FlowWorks? Why would you want to do this? The first reaction that many people have is “we already have a SCADA system, why would we want to use FlowWorks?” Because FlowWorks is not just for dataloggers, and it does a lot more than just store and plot data. Think of some of the things you could be doing with your SCADA data if you used FlowWorks to do it…

If you are in the municipal business, odds are that you have a SCADA system. You probably also have some dataloggers and maybe some sewer flow meters. Wouldn’t it be nice to put all of that data into one place? Do you want to easily plot flow data from your treatment plant SCADA with rainfall data collected by your dataloggers? How about adding some laboratory measurement results along side? If you use FlowWorks, you can do this.

Plus, if you want, the data flow can go BACKWARDS from FlowWorks to your SCADA! What if you use FlowWorks to collect rainfall from some rain gauge dataloggers, but your SCADA also collects rainfall data? The two can give data to each other, so you and your users see the complete dataset! Core staff who use SCADA see valuable information, using the interface that they are used to. At the same time, data from SCADA (which is often difficult to distribute to users outside of the SCADA system) is made available to a larger set of users. No more having to deal with different data formats because some of your data came from the SCADA, some came datalogger brand X and yet other info came from Brand Y.

Setup Personal Alarms

Use the FlowWorks alarming system to setup notifications for other purposes that aren’t mission critical SCADA alarms…maybe you need to know when flows at a treatment plant reach a certain point so you can take a sample…or it’s time to photograph potential flooding at a drainage location…or maybe you want to know the next time a chlorine analyzer shows a low value so that you can go and take a sample to verify it. These are all things that you can do but might not have SCADA alarms setup for…with FlowWorks you can create your OWN notifications without requiring your SCADA staff to setup these alarms for you.

Your OWN Notifications

Yes, that’s what I said – this is a big deal. In FlowWorks, each user can customize their alarms and notifications, independent of anyone else. This can help you do your job more efficiently, the way you want to do it, and without extra corporate overhead that is so often required.

Custom Reporting

Use the reporting functions to produce tables for your reports…total water consumption, water quality reporting, rainfall summaries and statistics, pump run times, chemical injection summaries…if your SCADA system has been measuring it there is something that FlowWorks can do to make it more useful to you. Why record it if you can’t use it for anything?

SCADA Data Security and FlowWorks

FlowWorks provides data viewing and analysis tools only. There are no control functions that would be in a typical SCADA setup. This means that when you are viewing data sent to FlowWorks from your SCADA system, it is a mirrored COPY of the data rather than the original data itself. In this way the finite control details of your system are protected from the user, leaving your system and network ultimately secure.

Do you have information that you want to distribute to a larger group of users, but due to security concerns over your SCADA system you can’t do it? If your SCADA system is connected to FlowWorks then you get the best of both worlds…your SCADA system stays locked behind your corporate security, but the data that you want to distribute to others is made available. FlowWorks CANNOT be used to alter data or access your SCADA system and controls in any way.

In the meantime, you and other FlowWorks users within your organization enjoy simple, unlimited access to the information you need, from anywhere with an internet connection. Even if the only thing you use your SCADA system for is to graph data, I guarantee you that FlowWorks will do a better job than your SCADA graphing engine.