Text Analytics for the Water Industry

Knowledge management in the Water Industry is archaic, that is if it at all exists. Since the turn of the century there has been dire doomsday predictions of mass retirement of water professionals with 20 to 30+ years of systems knowledge. With the economic slowdown and its effect on public retirement funds, most of those professionals held on to their jobs and now we are seeing the exodus happening. Many water managers are concerned. As their staff retires, they leave with the institutional knowledge and that is quite scary. After all there is no structured method of information capture.

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Most of our industry's Operational Intelligence lies unstructured in text-rich data. This data resides in emails, text messages, alerts, notes, chats, reports, and documents (word, excel, powerpoint, database,) etc.  Currently all this data, and hence information, sits virtually unanalyzed and unused. Much of this information  has the potential to deliver operational insights that can be used to make informed smarter decisions in the future.

Text analytics has made great progress in the last decade. Deep language processing capabilities such as summarization, multi-faceted search, and sentiment analysis is mainstream now. Technology is readily available to gather, store, filter, and mine textual information for hidden signals and patterns, trends, and anomalies. And most of this is open-source technology, just the kind of 'fit' public agencies look for.

At PROTEUS, we are working on Text Analytics. With new tools available to handle big data, we can now get access to this unprecedented amount of data and extract value. We no longer have to rely only on models (hydraulic or process) and SCADA information to understand and draw conclusions about our system operations, we can now tap into  a mountain of unstructured and unused complex data and derive insight that can boost our system performance like never before.

PROTEUS model of Operational Intelligence

We believe that once our water clients can crack the code on this cross-enterprise textual data, they will see a significant improvement in operations. Asking the right questions will make all the difference. The more specific and focused the questions can be, the better results can be achieved.

Water managers do not need to do another 'master plan' and set about searching for the data to feed the Analytics engine.  They already have the components to start generating these insights. They can start with existing documents, even with just the organization's email and folders on the server. While every organization is different, we can assure you that results can be seen within just a few months of getting started.

To learn more about how to get the water industry's text analytics initiative underway, on to Smart Operations Intelligence, please contact us at www.consult-proteus.com.

55,000+ water agencies in the US, and....??

United States is approximately 3,718,691 square miles in size, and has a population of 314,661,000 (mid 2012 estimate). To manage this, we have 55,000+ water agencies. I am not including wastewater agencies here. In several places, we have combined water and wastewater agencies, but in many places it is not so.

In San Diego county,  we have 4,525.52 square miles and a population of 3,095,313 (2010 census). To manage this, we have 24 water agencies and the San Diego Water Authority to oversee the region.

(In comparison, there are only a few dozen power utilities in the US, and only one that operates in San Diego.)

Let's do the simple math:
A typical US water agency manages about 67.6 square miles, and 5,721 people.
A typical water agency in San Diego manages about 188.5 square miles, and 128,971 people.

Yes, the simple math does not really do justice to the numbers. There are many agencies covering large swaths of land and support very small population, and vice-versa. But the underlying question is do these water agencies currently operate at their best efficiency point and giving the best value to their customers?
We are talking about efficient resource distribution, limited water loss, optimization of labor, connect with customers so that they understand and appreciate the impact of water usage patterns. And we all know that the answer is No. All these agencies get an A or B for effort, but about a D or lower for results.

So, what are the Solutions?

Everyone will jump up and down and say Innovation! (It's an over used buzz word these days.) Yes, innovation is the answer, but it comes in different forms. Just finding new treatment technologies is not enough. Unfortunately, water agencies currently define innovation = better water treatment methods. Innovation has to touch every aspect of the Water Industry, inside out. As a first step, there are four sectors where these agencies need to focus on:

Energy - Apart from working on energy efficiency projects (i.e. change the light bulbs, buy efficiency motors,etc.), the agencies need to focus on operating the systems with dynamic real-time optimization. More details on the concept can be found here. The result of this will not only be energy savings but also additional revenue that can then be applied back towards system improvements.

Technology - Adopt a SMART Operations and Maintenance concept. This will include model based control, real-time forecasting, advanced sensing and monitoring, dynamic data visualization, analysis and decisions. The water agencies have a Big Data problem, all we need is to adopt the technology tools and solutions from other disciplines and adapt them to our operations.

Economics - Change the pricing models to match supply and demand and reflect the 'real' value of water based on it's source and use. Move from the era of water development to the era of water allocation, test out the strategies and implement them. Move away from capital financing needs (historically met by Federal and State grants) to financial instruments from private sector as low-risk-low-return investment options.

Communication - Engage with public using communication channels beyond bill-stuffers and calendars with kid's drawings. Develop relationships with community organizations without explicitly trying the 'educate' the public. Lose the word "Outreach" from all your vocabulary. Be a partner.

For more details.