The Village of Buffalo Grove in Illinois adjusted its operational strategy in response to trends and anomalies identified in daily demand patterns and nighttime averages. This shows how the typical weekday consumption profile flattened during the COVID‐19 response to resemble a characteristic weekend curve. The blue line represents actual zonal flow, and the green line is the predicted pattern, based on system learning.With compounding factors such as fewer staff to analyze data, increased data sources and reduced budgets, the challenges for water utilities to remain operationally resilient have become even greater.
Even before the pandemic began, the topic of water loss had become a high priority for many utilities nationwide as more regulations have called for a reduction in non-revenue water (NRW) and municipal budget pressures continue to direct utilities to fix wasteful leaks. To address this challenge, The Village of Buffalo Grove, a suburban community located about 20 miles northwest of Chicago with a population of 42,000 and 12,000 water customers, partnered with Aquify to implement a central event management system that combines 24-7 distribution network monitoring, sensors, and machine learning/AI software.
As recently featured in Opflow magazine, released by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), by embracing machine learning and AI to help monitor their water distribution network, Buffalo Grove has been able to:
- Perform real-time NRW and leak analytics by measuring inflows and outflows in four distinct district metered areas (DMAs).
- Adopt a water loss control strategy that prioritizes leak detection dispatch based on the most vulnerable areas of their network and the cost of the leak.
- Gain additional value from the systems and data streams they’ve invested in overtime by using a professional analytics service and event management platform.
- Compare system performance pre-pandemic to the ‘new normal’.
For more details about how your community can use real-time intelligence while operating with a lean staffing model through a public-private partnership, email us at contact@aquify.com.