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‘HydroWeb’ Data Dashboard Turns ‘Complexity Into Simplicity’



07/25/2018

Living in an age wherein in we are in constant grip of data flood, the relevant and urgent data monitoring, analysis and prediction helps in decision making.


Dailycsr.com – 25 July 2018 – The need of information being “actionable” is a shared knowledge amid the clients across the markets in the Tetra Tech, whereby “actionable information” drives decision making.
 
It was around twenty five years ago that big data picked up pace in the sector, whereby flooding the clients with “megabytes and gigabytes” of figures and facts which the latter “hungry” for information welcomes. Moreover, the flood carried the volume to “petabytes and zettabytes” levels. At this point, the managers who sought relevant data were thrown amid “oceans of data”, which made it difficult for them to select the essential and urgent ones.
 
Therefore, addressing the requirement of relevant and timely data needed for analysing, the employees at Tetra Tech coming from a varied range of fields like “engineering, science, and technology”, started to explore technologies that would “identify, analyze, and report mission-critical information”.
 
Here is a glimpse into the ways of “innovative data analytics techniques” along with “digital dashboards” that are used for key data integration, display and analysis. This way, the clients are supported with relevant data that help them “gain insights” and empowers them to take decisions to improve upon efficiency and customer service, besides being able to take real time decisions, while using “predictive analytics” to plan out the future.
 
The dashboard to be effective needs to turn “complexity into simplicity”, whereby presenting data to inform the management about “rapidly changing conditions”. HydroWeb was designed with the help of Jean-François Pouliot, a software expert at Tetra Tech. HydroWeb is a data dashboard for monitoring “water and sewer flows”, identifying “line breaks”, predicting over flows, anticipating the heavy rain impact and projecting the “water quality conditions over the next 24 hours”.
 
In Jean-François’ words:
“We designed HydroWeb to link various types of operational and hydraulic data within a web-based GIS interface for monitoring, prediction, and analysis. The system includes data acquisition and archiving from public and private sources such as water stations, hydrometrics stations, and city equipment. HydroWeb integrates the data on a customized dashboard linked to GIS maps and features such as water or sewer system schematics, email or text message warning notifications, and access to archived data, depending on client needs.”
 
With the help of radar image updates and other data sources, HydroWeb is capable monitoring the rainfall in real time, while extrapolating the rain predictions. The technology churns raw data and shapes it into “actionable information”, whereby empowering the decision makers.
 
Multiple users and projects can be accommodated into the flexible system, while “operations and maintenance departments, civil security agencies, engineering departments, and legal affairs users” like insurance firms can also benefit from the technology. While, Jean-François added:
 “We can build a system to monitor and manage just about anything dependent on time-series databases. We have been doing mostly sewer system work—capacity monitoring, sewer overflow prediction and analysis, and so on—but there are lots of possibilities.”
 
Since its debut in 2007, HydroWeb has gained popularity and Jean-François said:
“People everywhere have lots of data coming at them, and they want to track it in a way that’s organized and efficient, and notifies them when things are not going right. We can tailor an approach that meets their needs. We save them time, and we save them money. They like that.”
 
 
 
References:
3blmedia.com