Towards an integrated platform for decision support in water utility management

Abstract

The pressure on water supply systems is a real challenge for water utilities, which are entrusted with the responsibility to manage and operate those systems. Water utility engineers and managers make decisions based on data that are obtained from several information systems (IS), such as geographic information systems (GIS), billing, asset operation and maintenance or accounting. Most of the time, these IS result in data silos as a consequence of lack of machine communication protocols, common data formats or common meaning of exchanged content. On the other hand, the diversity of IS is a challenge to water utilities which struggle with data consistency and interoperability. In this context, water utility engineers and managers make decisions based on data which are often incomplete, inaccurate or out-of-date. In this paper, we present an IT platform that integrates data from different information systems, including tools to support decision-making on water supply systems (e.g., performance indicators, water, and energy balances). This platform, developed in collaboration with a representative set of Portuguese water utilities, allows water utilities to integrate their data and perform analysis of their systems. With this approach, we provide water utilities and water supervision agencies with the possibility to compute a unified set of metrics whatever the IS they use.