The ArcGIS Notebooks solution is reliable and secure. It works perfectly, eliminating the chances of human errors and providing PVSC with accurate and up-to-date data through a comprehensive dashboard.
case study
Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission Automates Wastewater Management Workflow with ArcGIS Notebooks
Challenge
The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) had to manually manage high volumes of wastewater, especially during rain events, which can put immense pressure on their system capacity.
Solution
ArcGIS Notebooks
Result
PVSC implemented ArcGIS Notebooks to monitor and automate task assignments, which helped them streamline their operations and improve the accuracy of their data.
The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC), a regional wastewater district in Northern New Jersey, is one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in the United States. With the critical responsibility of managing approximately 25 percent of the state's wastewater, PVSC serves approximately 1.6 million people across 48 municipalities. Processing an average of 250 million gallons of wastewater per day, PVSC faces the ongoing challenge of efficiently managing considerable fluctuations in wastewater volume to mitigate overflows, particularly during rain events. To address one of these challenges, PVSC successfully implemented a solution involving ArcGIS Notebooks to automate one of their wastewater management routines, yielding notable improvements in efficiency and data quality.
Challenge
PVSC faces numerous challenges in its wastewater management operations. One such challenge is the management of high volumes of wastewater during rain events that can put immense pressure on PVSC’s system capacity.
Tom Laustsen, chief operating officer for the PVSC, explains, “To mitigate overflows, our team has to control plant inflows and adjust sewer regulators to divert excess wastewater flows, when conditions are most critical, in order to protect the plant. This process requires constant monitoring and intervention by operators to ensure maximum throughput and minimum environmental impact.”
Another challenge faced by PVSC is the inspection of regulators after each rain event or overflow. Laustsen says, “Our team is tasked with inspecting each of our regulators to ensure that the system has completely transitioned back to dry weather conditions. This process requires us to manually assign collection system operators to inspect each point and document their observations, thereby increasing their workload and the potential for human error.”
The existing manual process of monitoring conditions and creating work tasks to verify and document the system’s transition back to a non-overflowing state imposed a consistent burden on the PVSC team. PVSC began to explore opportunities to automate their wet weather event management approach.
Solution
To deploy a comprehensive solution, PVSC collaborated with Hazen and Sawyer, a consulting firm that specializes in helping clients address water supply and water quality challenges. Hazen is a leader in delivering outstanding technical solutions and providing industry expertise.
Together, these organizations collectively developed and implemented a workflow leveraging the power of ArcGIS Notebooks to create a Python script that automated the monitoring of conditions and the creation of work tasks. ArcGIS Notebooks provides a Jupyter notebook experience optimized for spatial data science and automation of web GIS workflows.
ArcGIS Notebooks allowed PVSC to create an interconnection of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Workforce, and ArcGIS Dashboards, enabling seamless automation across the entire system using Python scripting and the scheduling functionality of ArcGIS Notebooks. The Python script is scheduled to retrieve sensor data every hour to determine if the volume of wastewater flow surpasses the threshold required by PVSC’s Standard Operating Procedures and the position of the regulator gates which control the flow of wastewater into PVSC’s system.
Once the threshold is surpassed and the gates are closed, the rain event has started. The script then triggers a regulator event, generating work orders in ArcGIS Workforce for inspecting each gate and overflow after the event has ended. After inspections, the script updates the records and generates a report.
To summarize, PVSC’s solution involved the following steps:
- Automation: ArcGIS Notebooks was utilized to create a Python script that automated the monitoring of conditions and creation of work tasks.
- Event triggering: The Python script was designed to trigger events when specific conditions, such as reaching a certain volume of wastewater, were met.
- System verification: A workflow was created involving connecting data from PVSC’s ArcGIS Workforce mobile app to their dashboard to verify the state of the system and confirm the end of an event.
- Data management: PVSC utilized ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise for data editing and management. ArcGIS Online is used to share data when it needs to be public facing.
According to Kenneth Camacho, a senior consultant from Hazen, PVSC needed a tool to seamlessly integrate Python scripts and connect PVSC sensors with ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Workforce. They also required a tool that would facilitate streamlined and transparent collaboration with the client.
“PVSC has a secure and complex infrastructure. To automate wastewater management . . . ArcGIS Notebooks proved to be the perfect solution for such integration,” says Camacho.
Results
The implementation of ArcGIS Notebooks provided PVSC with a robust and efficient solution for their wastewater management operations. By using scheduling functionality to monitor and automate task assignments, PVSC can streamline their operations and improve the accuracy of their data.
The PVSC team no longer needs to manually schedule work tasks to verify and document the system’s transition back to a non-overflowing state. The solution created with Python and ArcGIS Notebooks automatically schedules the collection of data from sensors, updates records at regular intervals, and assigns work tasks to collection system operators. This allows the PVSC team to focus on other critical aspects of their operations.
Laustsen says, "Even though we are still in the adoption stage . . . we already see enormous potential for workload reduction, data accuracy improvement, and long-term cost-saving benefits."
ArcGIS Notebooks is beneficial for prototyping code and workflows during the development and implementation stages. The collaboration between PVSC and Hazen was greatly facilitated by ArcGIS Notebooks, providing transparency and interactivity in workflows. Hazen consultants could easily access the script without needing to request access to the PVSC secure infrastructure.
Camacho says, "Before using ArcGIS Notebooks, I would spend around four to six hours each time accessing the PVSC secure environment to update the code. With ArcGIS Notebooks, I save this time."
Laustsen adds, "With ArcGIS Notebooks, we have ownership of the solution and can make changes as conditions or needs evolve. Moreover, ArcGIS Notebooks allows us to update and modify the solution without disrupting the ongoing code."
Moving forward, PVSC plans to continue the automation of their operations, leveraging the capabilities of ArcGIS Notebooks to further enhance their wastewater management processes.