CASE STUDY
“ Increasingly , data from both our IT and OT sources is being combined to create an even more detailed view of our operations ,” said Katherine Gee , Unitywater ’ s Executive Manager of Customer and Community . “ This is needed to help guide future renewal and maintenance plans and ensure that our high-quality service levels are maintained at a reasonable cost , while ensuring reliability to our customers every day .”
The Simplified Water Analytics Platform , SIWA digital meters installed as part of Unitywater ’ s ‘ Digital Neighbourhood ’ pilot program .
“ The Simplified Water Analytics Platform is able to act as a command centre for capturing data and creating user-generated , customisable views ,” she said .
Anurag Vijaywat , Sales Director – Energy and Utilities at HCL , said HCL is building the new platform in close collaboration with Unitywater . Throughout
To support this work , Unitywater has been working closely with technology partner HCL Technologies . The current project has involved the development of a data platform that stores and structures the data that will be used to gather insights .
HCL ’ s Simplified Water Analytics Platform , SIWA overlays the analytics and reporting layer that aims to achieve best in class outcomes and meet the specific needs of water utilities across Australia and New Zealand . This platform is designed to bridge the gap between Unitywater ’ s asset and customer data , leading to enhanced customer satisfaction , productivity and asset life through more informed and timely decision-making .
The platform makes use of data from multiple sources including the asset management system , GIS , digital meters , SCADA , IoT networks and Unitywater ’ s customer information and billing system .
When data is sourced from various systems on a real-time basis , this poses a new challenge of how to manage large volumes of data and not waste the insights available . It is imperative to leverage Big Data and cloud technologies .
DATA FROM BOTH OUR IT AND OT SOURCES IS BEING
COMBINED TO CREATE
AN EVEN MORE DETAILED VIEW OF OUR OPERATIONS .
the project to date , both organizations have been living the core ethos of helping communities via sustainable processes , to create an efficient and reliable solution for the ecosystem and returning value to its stakeholders .
Unitywater will continue to work closely with HCL to seek to increase the capabilities of the new platform and drive additional value for Unitywater ’ s operations and customers . p
“ All data is fed into a data lake that was created during the platform ’ s deployment . This makes it easier for our people to access the data they need and use it in dynamic dashboards to better support their planning and decision-making activities ” said Gee .
The new platform also has the capability in the future to deliver automated water balances , predict and better manage outages and identify areas where making cost savings is possible without affecting customer service levels .
Gee indicates that the newly deployed platform by HCL will assist the organization to better visualise data and make it available where it can best be used . The first use case that has been delivered into production is the storage and management of high volume smart meter data sourced from 10,000
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