The Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources (DWR) had a wealth of data along with talented experts ready to use it. But all that data was in different silos where experts couldn’t access it readily enough to optimize water production. Its six water treatment plants used a mix of outdated hardware and software that stored data at different sites.

But now, Gwinnett County aggregates real-time and historical data from across its facilities – and gets that data to the right people when and where they need it, both on site and in the cloud. It uses AVEVA Operations Control, which provides access to the AVEVA operations software portfolio as hybrid software-as-a-service (cloud). That hybrid cloud approach lets Gwinnett County tailor its software system to its current needs, while making it easy to add new users and assets as the county continues to grow and its water production system evolves. It gives Gwinnett County flexible, comprehensive access to data that it’s already using to save water and money and help the whole county run more smoothly.

Now Gwinnett County has secure data historization and access at each level of the operation in a way that separates out the IT and OT networks. The hybrid approach ensures each facility continues to have appropriate control on site, while giving experts remote access to the system-wide data they need to optimize water production across the system.

In addition to giving Gwinnett County flexible access to data, AVEVA Operations Control also gives the county the flexibility it needs to grow – which it will likely need as one of the fastest-growing counties in Georgia.

Flexible data access for the whole county

This access is helping the whole county make better- informed decisions – not just the Department of Water Resources. For example, emergency services can pull up real-time data directly from the cloud about water pressure and flow rates at different locations. They don’t have to take precious time during an emergency requesting the DWR to gather that data and send it back to them. It’s already there at their fingertips.

If other county departments realize they can also use water system data, it’s easy to add new users and choose which data they can access. That easy, flexible access to data makes AVEVA Operations Control ideal for an organization like Gwinnett County with many departments and functions. Different departments can all access data from the same single source of truth as they discover new ways to use it.

Optimizing water production

Gwinnett County is just starting to discover what it can do with its flexible data access – but it’s already using it to optimize its team’s talents to produce and distribute water more efficiently. Operators access AVEVA Insight’s automatic analyses in the cloud to keep the water system running at its best. AVEVA Insight uses machine learning to detect anomalies so operators can fix them quickly.

It also automatically analyzes data to let operators know what the best operating point is for a pump and tells them which pumps need to be staged first. Operators can easily see the runtime or cycles on a pump and check to see how it compares to historical averages. As a result, operators have been identifying water loss that had otherwise gone undetected. For example, operators discovered and fixed totalizer sensors that had been off for a long time.