GIS in Water/Wastewater Treatment Plants

[TimHayes]

I work at a large Wastewater Treatment Plant. We have constructed a Geodatabase for all our Plant's Piping, Valves, Manholes, and other assets (including Electrical and Fiber Optic). Our Plant staff routinely use our ArcGIS Server Map Viewer (constructed in Flex), for example, to locate Piping and Isolation Valves which can be done in a matter of seconds. Whereas before GIS, the staff had to scounge and pile through dozens of drawings to locate what they need which sometimes took hours or days. Thanks to GIS we now know where all our buried utilities are located in a very specific sense instead of the general area. To date we have 78 piping systems, hundreds of miles of piping (above ground, buried, in tunnels, and basements), 1,200 isolation valves, 300 manholes, etc... in our Plant GIS.

Are there other Water or Wastewater Treatment Plants that use GIS? please share your stories/experiences. Why did you choose to use GIS? Why are you not using GIS? What barriers have you or do you expect to encounter? How are you using GIS?

NOTE: This is not GIS for distribution/collection systems, this discussion pertains specifically to GIS inside Water/Wastewater Treatment Plants.

[RaynerHoward]

Tim,

Were you able to post your Data Dictionary/Schema/Data model to ESRI's website?  I found an ESRI data model but it is from 2008:

http://downloads2.esri.com/support/TechArticles/Water_Utilities_Data_Model.pdf

Haven't been able to locate your submission.  We are gearing up to map a local wastewater treatment plant's electrical system (transformers, generators, pull boxes, switchgears, power poles, power lines, etc.) and would appreciate any information or insight you could provide.

Thanks.

Rayner

[TimHayes]

Joshua,

I have endeavored to answer your questions as best I can.

I am working with ESRI to have our Wastewater Treatment Plant Geodatabase Schema posted to the ESRI site within 3 months.

You're fortunate to have a new Plant, our Plant, the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, was built in 1956 with many additions/subtractions since that time. Yes, you do have the opportunity to do it right. Your Plant is new with, I assume, good documentation on what is where and what is what on the drawings. For references, all we used when we started was Wastewater Treatment Engineering by Metcalf & Eddy. I am also considering taking the Wastewater Treatment Operators Certificate Program at California State University �?? Sacramento. It�??s online. You will need to do a lot of talking with your Plant�??s Operators and Maintenance people when you start a Plant GIS project. We also became certified as Utility Locators and in Geophysical Subsurface Utility Locating, in addition to taking an online course in Subsurface Utilities Engineering.

Our primary focus when we were transferred out of our Distribution/Collection System, into our Plant, was, �??find where all our buried utilities are located inside the Plant and put them into a GIS�?�. This was our focus for about 3 years. We managed to identify all that is buried where, with the exception of electrical (60% complete so far); irrigation (10% complete so far); and Cathodic Protection (5% complete so far). Everything else from our 70 + piping systems in use or abandoned is now in our GIS database. We followed ASCE 38-02 Subsurface Utility Engineering Guidelines for this project.

Results: first, our Plant staff can now go to our ArcGIS Server 10.1 Flex Map Viewer and see all the piping (buried or otherwise), duct banks, isolation valves, planimetry (structures, tanks, buildings, tunnels, etc�?�) overlain on a 3in res digital color aerial photo (our basemap). Whenever a pipe leaks or they need to find a valve, the first place they go is to our MapViewer to see what could be leaking and where the isolation valve is located. Given that it is in 2D, no 3D or isometric views, we have a field in our Pipes Feature Class for pipe location (buried, tunnel, crawlspace, building, above ground, underwater, covered trench, etc�?�).  3D GIS is still not there yet for inside Plant use. Second, we implemented a Plant Subsurface Utilities Management Program which includes the GIS staff doing the USA work inside the Plant and using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to find our buried utilities. Third, we instituted a �??Call When You Dig, but only if you find something�?� program. Whenever they are digging a hole or trench and find a pipe, duct bank, conduit, wire, etc�?�they call the GIS Team. We go out there with our Trimble GeoXH 6000 which includes a built-in camera, take a photo and GPS point for what they found. We now have 4,000 GPS locations inside our Plant of identified exposed buried utilities. Now they almost know what is buried where before they do any digging. Fourth, we found an old utility trailer in our �??Boneyard�?�, outfitted it as our field truck (a.k.a. �??The Batmobile�?�), with a cool racing striped paint job thanks to our Plant�??s Paint Shop, and we pull it with our electric cart. It has all our supplies. Those seeing the plethora of tools/technologies that we use working in the field provides us with a degree of �??street-cred�?� among our Operations & Maintenance staff. Plus I always tell our O&M people that it is my job to make your job easier and less stressful!

In our GIS, it also includes Pumps, Heat Exchangers, and Fittings for those piping systems where we plan on developing hydraulic models. All the other piping systems include pipes, all sources, sinks, and isolation valves. This is so we know at the very least where it goes, what it feeds, and if we isolate a certain segment, what will be isolated downstream.

Balancing Asset Management with GIS for inside Plant; we learned some hard lessons on this one. We do not include pipes, there are just too many pipes inside a Plant, and the 2D view of GIS makes it a mess to work with in terms of work order management. We only include certain point features; Electrical Manholes where PM�??s are performed on the Sump Pumps, and Backflow Preventors where PM�??s are also performed upon. Whenever GIS and CMMS reaches the point of 3D or isometric viewing for pipes and pipe racks which is needed for inside Plant application, we will then consider whether to include pipes and other feature classes.

Note that we use InforEAM 8.5 for our Asset Management Program with no plans to change to another software. Our current software more than meets our needs.

ESRI provides a lot of free software/tools/scripts with the release of 10.1. We found that 2 licenses for ArcGIS 10.1 Advanced, 1 for ArcGIS Server 10.1 Advanced, ArcSDE 10.1, and SQL Server Express 2008 R2, more than meets the GIS software/database needs for our Plant GIS. SQL Server was free! the Flex Map Viewer was built by me for free! all with info found on the ESRI site. There was no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a Plant GIS.

Today, I just ordered two licenses for InfoWater for ArcGIS Suite to use for our hydraulic models (this will also help us model Pump Control Settings and other requirements of our systems without having to try it in the field first).

We are working on a "Tunnel View" application to use with ArcGIS, sort of like Google's Street View, except showing the pipes in our basements, buildings, etc... In addition there is some discussion of us purchasing a GPS-enabled UAV ("Drone") to allow us to take our own georeferenced aerial photos on our 5 square miles of Plant Property.

It sounds like you have a lot questions and ideas. E-mail me at timothy.hayes@sanjoseca.gov so we can discuss in more detail.

Tim Hayes
GIS Manager
San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant
and South Bay Water Recycling Program
San Jose, CA

[TimHayes]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.I want to know that what kind of water treatment you used on your plant????

I work at a wastewater treatment plant that treats sewage. We are not a water treatment plant as we do not treat drinking water. We treat our wastewater to the advanced tertiary level before releasing it.

[SecuredAcqua]

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[JohnSchweisinger]

One of the Products/Services our company provides is a GIS Field Audit of Assets using GPS. Were you creating these systems using real world locations?