CASE STUDY: LI
Water Utility Uses Location Intelligence to Inform Spending Decisions Central Arkansas Water (CAW) needed an efficient solution to minimize operational expenses and spend capital dollars effectively to remain viable at affordable rates. The solution was likely to be complex, requiring finding ways to maximize the use of siloed data to increase knowledge and understanding of CAW’s current and future needs in a reliable and repeatable manner. Surprisingly, the solution was found in a most unassuming locale — the GIS department. By Alex Harper and Tad Bohannon
C
entral Arkansas Water (CAW), a water utility company located in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the United States, provides potable water services to approximately 500,000 people in 23 communities, utilizing two supply lakes, three treatment plants, and over 2,600 miles of water mains within a 720 square mile service territory. Its GIS department consists of only seven of CAW’s 323 employees, who work hand-in-hand with Pulaski Area Geographic Information System (PAgis) — an independent government agency ‘housed’ within CAW’s administration building, in immediate proximity to CAW’s GIS department. Both units provide overlapping map and location services under a single manager to maintain base map data for area utilities
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and governments; the data is used to provide the location for public improvements and related information, including water lines, property boundaries, streets, stormwater facilities, property ownership, etc. When combined with the information from CAW’s many department databases and customer accounts, as well as other public databases, the location data takes on a whole new level of usefulness. CAW’s GIS department reorganizes all that data into easily interpreted charts, maps, and dashboards, which help the organization to quickly make informed decisions.
Making location data accessible to all At the most basic level, high-quality near-real-time data is available to every distribution crew in the field on utility-provided iPads. This information is priceless to the field personnel who may need to quickly locate the right valve at 2 am in the pouring rain before making repairs to the hospital losing water pressure or the school needing to open its doors to students in just a few hours. How can CAW and local fire departments efficiently inspect and exercise all 13,000+ fire hydrants twice a year and each of the 40,000+ valves on a regular schedule? Using the GIS located hydrants and valves, combined with the relevant identifying information such as make, model, and left or right turn, CAW’s GIS department has developed an interactive map (see Figure 1) that enables crews to locate each appurtenance, know whether it has been inspected and exercised, indicate when it has been inspected and exercised, and, when necessary, create work orders in an efficient manner. A pilot study demonstrated that GIS’ solution saved the utility over USD 1,000,000 each year, by enabling CAW distribution crews to efficiently perform the work without assistance from any third party.
