Info360 Asset Data-Driven Sewer Planning: Aqua America's Integrated Planning for Sewer Systems

MARTHA NUNEZ: All right, we're going to start out with our Safe Harbor Statement. If you need to go ahead and pause it and read it, please go ahead and do that at this time. So the title of this presentation is Info360 Asset Data Driven Sewer Planning. Today, we're going to be discussing Aqua America's Integrated Planning for Sewer Systems.

My name is Martha Nunez. And I am a Customer Success Manager here at Autodesk. I have a background on Civil and Environmental Engineering. And here at Autodesk, I specialize in our Asset Management Portfolio for our Water Solutions. I was a Project Manager for the project that we conducted with GHD to help Aqua America implement Info360 Asset on their systems.

ALTON WHITTLE: My name's Alton Whittle. I'm a Project Director/Digital Accelerator with GHD. I've been with the firm now for 30 some years and work primarily in digital integration and linear assets.

Just to give you a little background, GHD is a global company. We've been in 135 different countries. We offer services worldwide and have been well established as engineering firms, especially for the water industry.

So our agenda today, we're going to cover a little bit about the background for the Aqua Pennsylvania project. We're also going to talk about what were their big data management challenges that they were trying to resolve and how to tie in this decision planning using risk, prioritization, and rehabilitation planning in that decision-making process and make the most out of their data, and really, talk about the extra benefits that came about from this project in terms of communications and collaboration. And then we're going to wrap up with some of the next steps we see both for the industry and specifically for the Info360 product.

So to get started today, I'll give you a little background on Aqua Pennsylvania. They're part of a larger organization that serves water, wastewater, municipal clients in the area, operating across over eight states currently. They have six operating centers, specifically in Pennsylvania, where this original project started. And in Pennsylvania, just to give you a scope of that, they own and operate over 50 wastewater systems plus about three times the number of water systems. There are about 150 water systems just within the state of Pennsylvania.

And most of those systems came about-- they are a private entity-- but most of them came about through acquisition of public municipal systems that were either underfunded or lacked some management direction. So they were purchased and now are managed by Aqua PA. So they run into a number of challenges across the state here, such as aging infrastructure. They have a lot of pipes that have exceeded their lifespan. They are dealing with conditions where they're degrading and not performing up to the standards that they need to do.

This is combined with a lot of missing information or limited historical knowledge. Some of these systems were just recently bought. And they came with very, very limited information along with the systems. And with that aging system, what they're dealing with is, especially here in Pennsylvania, we have a lot of infiltration and inflow, which is excess water that's coming in during rainfall events and taking up the capacity in the collection conveyance systems. And that's problematic in terms of being able to provide service.

One of the struggles that they have for complying with regulatory oversight and their rate structure is that they're under the PUC. So they have to provide information to the PUC as to the basis for what their budgets are, where they're spending their money, and how that's being used reliably. So those last two kind of tie together in terms of a challenge of managing a system and providing that management insight to a third party. So really, where we started here, GHD was hired as a consultant for Aqua. And we started to look at how to build them into a smart future.

There is lots of data out there that's available and how to use that data to bring them full circle into transparency for their rates and their client services, consistent budgeting across different divisions, across different states, and really enhancing how the staff knowledge is conveyed and captured. So we're doing this-- visually, here in this circle, you see how the beginning here is how to leverage the data they have, how to look for those gaps in data, supplement that, gather the right people in the room to see how the planning is occurring both on a corporate level down to the engineering level-- even to the field, to the individuals who are out collecting information in the field or doing construction-- bring that all together, analyze it, visualize it, and then look towards the future of how to augment that, how to automate those processes in terms of data collection, especially, make that into intelligence decisions, and act upon their results from that.

And then really, the one key point here is how to measure that and take that knowledge that's gained and recycle that back in as you complete this on an annual or monthly or five-year cycle. So GHD originally had looked Info Asset Planner as a solution. And then Autodesk came out with the new version of Info360 Asset, which is a web-based solution. And this really fit well in terms of being a centralized software as a service platform. So everyone was able to access that.

There was ample storage. And we'll talk about a little bit later how the data was able to be stored in there, especially the CCTV videos and the large quantity of data associated with condition assessment. And it really made that accessible to staff across the whole level from upper management to the field and provided the additional integration with Esri to allow for working with other solutions that are in place that Aqua had. So the original thing was to pick out a pilot study, which we did by selecting the area around Philadelphia.

So there's the suburbs of Philadelphia that was selected. That's their Southeast division of Pennsylvania. We selected that as a solution implementer for the pilot and then really looked at how this tool fit what they needed. And that was the real benefit here. It really does fit their purpose, which is a lot of CCTV management, the data collection use, coming up with risks to identify their high-priority assets, and then look at how to make decisions effectively on rehabilitation planning.

So with that being a good fit, the first step we went to was, how do we get over some of these data management challenges and really use Info360 Asset for that solution. So what you see here, previously, there was a lot of multiple data sources in place and a lot of siloing of that information. You had all kinds of asset information, such as the GIS, you had historical records, you had cut sheets-- those type of asset information that was stored in multiple locations.

Depending on whether it was a paper copy, whether it was stored in the corporate GIS, or whether it was in an engineer's database or Excel file, it added on these condition assessments where crews were going out into the field, looking at pipeline assessment, looking at manhole assessment, pulling conditions such as the next one-- their capacity studies where they had limitations in the system-- looking at flow metering in the capacity studies, looking at hydraulic models, and then looking at these regulatory compliances. And what we found was this data was scattered in different places. And only really the owner of that data had full access to it.

So the idea here was to bring these into a single source so that we could review them and use that data and then try and get away from this office server limitation where historical data was only stored in one place and available only to those individual people. So this was the first step. I think it went really well.

They were able to gather different project managers in the room. The GIS director, the field staff came in. They had all these discussions and really started looking for what all data was available and what was the critical stuff to at least start in this pilot study.

The big one, like I mentioned, and I wanted to point this out specifically, was the Condition Assessment data that was being collected. Aqua was in the process of just within this Southeast division, collecting televising of the pipes, what we label here as closed circuit television video. It's the CCTV. You can kind of see the video running here.

So they have this robotic unit. It goes down the pipe. It looks for defects. It looks for the condition of the pipe. It looks for sources of I&I.

As you can see here, there's clear water splashing in this pipe. I mean, that's not supposed to be in there. So it's taking up capacity. And it indicates that the pipe is failing and reaching its end of life. So they have previously collected 630,000 linear feet of televised pipe. And that was sitting in a series of hard drives on someone's desktop, and not even a hard drive internally to the PC but a portable hard drive that was sitting on someone's desktop.

And if another individual needed it, they'd put it in the mail and send it to them. And they'd get there a week later. So they had a large amount of data just sitting in very vulnerable locations in terms of the longevity of that data.

And the goal was to more than double that over the next three years in terms of where they wanted to see the condition of their system. So this was a big challenge that Aqua was facing. Go ahead, Martha. I think you're going to show the solution here.

MARTHA NUNEZ: All right, thanks, Alton. So in the next few slides, I'm going to be demonstrating how GHD is currently helping Aqua America manage all of their data management challenges that Alton described earlier in the presentation. So here we have Info360 Asset. And as we can see, we're simply logged into asset.info360.com. All of this information is centralized and available in the cloud.

Aqua America manages multiple small systems, including some systems in the Northwest of the state of Pennsylvania, as well as some of the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. So here we're zooming in to the suburb of East Northern. And we can view all of the GIS information that was imported, including the sanitary sewer GIS information, CCTV data that is color coded with the different colors depending on the severity of that CCTV. We have additional spatial data, including the Justice for Disadvantaged Communities, displayed in that red color in the map, in addition to other GIS layers, such as state roads and streams that were being used as part of the likelihood and consequence of failure analysis.

Here we're looking at an asset. And we can visualize more information about the asset by going under the Asset Details page, where we can view all of the information, including the CCTV ratings that are determined based on the NASSCO CCTV standard, which is a American standard. Under Properties, we can view the Asset ID of the Pipe as well as Asset IDs of the Manhole-- Upstream and Downstream Manholes-- which are essential for CCTV management.

So all of this information comes [AUDIO OUT]. We have Additional Attribute data, including the Material of the Pipe, the Length of the Pipe, the Width. And we can also view Additional Analysis Results, such as the Risk Analysis, which we'll cover later on in the presentation.

We have all of these different Risks and Scenarios as well as Rehab Action Results. So in this example, this Pipe has a Final Action of CIPP Lining. And we can visualize the CCTV data that is associated to the pipe in the GIS. So here on the left-hand side, we can view the different Condition codes of the CCTV.

Looks like this pipe has a hole around 218 feet. And we can visualize that defect of that hole here in the video that has been imported into the Info360 Asset interface. So as we can see, we are able to bring in GIS data, CCTV data, and additional information from different data sources, have it in this centralized database on the cloud where everyone can access it and make the best of their decision-making process.

In addition to bringing in data together, Alton specified a few of the challenges that come with collecting large volumes of CCTV data. So thousands of linear foot of this data gets collected at Aqua America. And being able to manage that data efficiently is crucial. In Info360 Asset, we have the CCTV upload capabilities that I'm going to demonstrate in this video. So under the Tasks page, we can import different Inspection Formats and view all of the data that has already been imported and import more data by clicking on their new PACP upload, choosing the Inspection Standard.

And then simply drag and drop all the information from those Access databases. Here we have over 200 databases that GHD was able to upload into Info360 Asset by just dragging and dropping. The upload process is very efficient. As long as the data is, again, standardized based on the American CCTV standard NASSCO, Info360 Asset is going to recognize the different schemas and data files as well as for the media.

So here, we are simply uploading a folder that contains the media from this specific CCTV inspection. And it recognizes those media files to seamlessly upload that data. So once this data is in here, it's going to have 100% cloud storage.

And this minimizes any potential resources that Aqua would need to store all of this data on premises. So now they no longer have to think about that anymore. This process can be conducted in bulk. So all of the terabytes of data that Aqua has collected is eventually going to live in Info360 Asset.

In addition to upload larger volumes of data, as Alton mentioned earlier, bring in information from different utilities and different systems. We got different contractors that do things in their own way. That data has the most optimal quality. It's also a challenge. So here I'm going to demonstrate the ways that GHD can validate all of that information that is being uploaded by the field inspectors in the field to make sure that everything has the best quality.

So here, we have the media field, which is going to indicate with a red X mark if any media files are missing. Let's look at this example. Looks like this inspection is missing a video file. We also have the length asset field, which once again with a red X mark, is going to indicate that the CCTV inspection is not linked to an asset in the GIS. So GHD's going to have to conduct some QA/QC processes to make sure that that data is matching up correctly.

Here we're looking at the inspections in the In Review status. Once an inspection is in this status, it means that it's not being used for any analysis because it's still being reviewed. In this example, GHD, if they find a defect that maybe wasn't coded by the field inspector, they can manually add that defect here directly into the Info360 Asset interface. And if they need to conduct a further review, they can go to the Details page and then visualize that information from the upstream and downstream manhole IDs, which need to match the GIS.

If it doesn't, they can indicate under the Notes section that the manholes don't match the GIS. Have the inspector correct and resubmit. And they can reject that inspection.

Once rejected, it's going to notify the field inspector that they need to go ahead and resubmit that inspection after it has been fixed. So now we have an example of how Info360 Asset not only can bring in different data sources, hold all of that information on the cloud, but it also improves the collaboration between the engineer or the consultant, GHD, and the field contractors that Aqua America has contracted for that CCTV work.

ALTON WHITTLE: Thanks, Martha. So this was a great success already from this first step here. They were able to bring in all these different data sources, really look at how the GIS tied into some of the information that was in there from previous flow-metering studies and modeling, along with the employee knowledge, so the employees could look at that and say, well, yeah, that's all the data or no. We have a whole other hard drive sitting somewhere that we were not aware of.

So getting all that available online was wonderful. I know our GIS guy had six 2-terabyte hard drives sitting on his desk at work. And he was so happy to get that extra space back when all of those were available on the web then. And that really did help communication.

So for example, I had a conversation with one of the project managers. And he said to me, hey, we're having a problem out here in this one area. The pump station's running really heavily. We can't figure out why. And together, we pulled up online the video for the pipes leading into it, found out that, sure enough, the staff had identified a defect just upstream that was pretty significant.

And they were able to address those problems, really, over a phone call from a distance. And it was really a changing moment for the client. I think they saw the real value of having everything at their fingertips. They didn't have to request a drive from the field department, get that mailed up, review, find that file within, like, 1,000 different records, and see what was being shown by actually watching through start to end or finding the right place in the video.

So as you noticed, Martha clicked on the defect. It went right to that defect in that pipe. So that really set the stage for information being available and how do you go to the next step then to utilize that data more efficiently, which is a good segue to the next slide there, Martha. So utilizing that data, how do they make decisions based on it? And this really comes down to risk prioritization and planning and decision-making from that.

So the first part of this was really sitting down with staff, figuring out what their vision was-- what did they want to achieve with this, what were their goals in having a successful utility. And we really broke it into three categories. This isn't anything special. It's just how we broke out the discussion.

But really, we looked at the social community-- what was the public's image, how was it affected, how is the service to the customers affected, and are there really any health and safety issues that are paramount that could result in disruption to the community. And then the second thing, obviously, it's a business. We're running this to be financially responsible.

There's only so much money to go around. There is only so much effort in terms of staffing that can be done. We really were looking at how the decisions being made were impacting the financial and operational resources that were available. And then obviously, as a wastewater entity, you fall under environmental stewardship and regulatory requirements.

There's requirements for what needs to be reported. There's capacity requirements. There's the responsibility to limit and eliminate any wet weather overflows when you have failing systems. So those are kind of the main categories. And we were really looking at how can we put those into values.

So from gaining those goals and those visions, then we started working with staff to look at what kind of data was available. And we really broke that down into a couple of different categories. There's predictive data. That's the information that you would normally see like pipe age, pipe material, soil type-- things that are going to give you indicators on how much life you have left in the asset and how well it's working.

Then there's consequence-based type data. And this might be what you normally associate with the GIS. How close are you to a stream? It is how close are you to a certain soil type. How close are you to state roads because then your costs go up if you're doing construction on a state road.

Or are you in a primary line, a big conveyance line right before it gets to the plant, versus a collection system that only serves a couple of houses? So those are consequence-based data points that we were looking at. And then we had all these other additional engineering studies that have been done-- flow-metering, hydraulic models-- those type of study-based that gives you more information on the operational workings of the assets. So are your pipes conveying? Do they have enough capacity to convey the flow during dry weather?

Or do they have enough for the wet weather? Are there areas that have higher priorities? Because all of the sudden when it rains, you're inundating your system. And then there's these observation-based ones that may be-- that's your CCTV data. What's the condition look like?

Manhole observations-- are your manholes falling apart? Are they in good condition-- overflow frequency-- those type of things. And that all gets put together then in this decision analysis. So with that, Martha's going to show you how that fits into Info360-- once these pieces were identified, how they get put into the system and can supplement the decision-making process.

MARTHA NUNEZ: Thanks, Alton. So let's take a look at how GHD developed the risk analysis for the Aqua America system here in Info360 Asset. So here in Info360 Asset under the Risk tab, we have the ability to create likelihood of failure and consequence of failure analysis, so all the criteria, including CCTV data, structural scores of the pipes, operation and maintenance scores, and defect codes. All of this comes from the CCTV data analysis results. Let's take a look at an example of how this information is scored for the structural score of pipes example.

So on the left-hand side, we have all the scores from 1 through 5, 5 being the highest likelihood of failure. So any pipe that has a structural condition greater than 4 is going to have a score of 5 for this specific criteria. We can view that as accounts and as account percentage to indicate how many pipes are falling under each score. And then we also have the ability to develop the consequence of failure setup.

So this is what GHD has created so far for Aqua America. We have this Flow Priority, Consequence of Failure, including I&I prioritization, depending on what basin the pipe is located in and proximity to streams and state roads. Let's take a look at another example on how the pipes are scored based on the proximity to the streams. So here, we're scoring the pipes a 5 out of 5 if they essentially are 0 feet or essentially intersect a stream.

If that's the case, then the consequence of failure of that pipe is much higher. It can include infiltration and inflow as well due to the proximity to that stream. And then each criteria's going to be weighted depending on how much weight we want to give that piece of criteria to the total consequence of failure score. Once that's been set up, this is where GHD specifies how we want to calculate the total risk.

So LoF and CoF are going to be added. And each are going to provide a weight of 50% to the total risk score. At the bottom right, we can see that any pipe that has a risk score of greater than 4 is going to be marked as an extreme risk of failure pipe. So once everything has been set up here in Info360 Asset and the model is run, we can view all of the risk analysis results in the form of a report.

So each pipe in the system is going to have a Total Risk Score, total LoF and total CoF. So let's take a look at the results for this specific asset, which was the highest scoring asset. We can view the ratings, again, that come from the CCTV results and then view all the different details of how this pipe got a total risk score of 3.9, which is putting it into the high risk grade category. We have the details on likelihood of failure.

So it looks like this pipe scored a 5 out of 5 under the Structural score. So it has high severity defects. And then the number of those defects is quite high as well. It looks like this pipe is in close proximity to a stream, giving it a 5 out of 5. And it looks like it's also in a high prioritization I&I basin.

Let's look at the CCTV inspection results. And here on the left-hand side, we can view that there are several score for fractures, which can also be viewed in the CCTV to kind of corroborate that information and corroborate the condition of the pipe, which is giving it a high likelihood of failure. And if we visualize this pipe in the map, we can also see that this pipe is quite close, almost intersecting a stream, giving it a high consequence of failure.

So this result that we've seen in this example is going to be calculated for all of Aqua America's systems. And it's going to essentially indicate to Aqua and GHD where to spend their money, which [INAUDIBLE] prioritize and make sure that they're optimizing their time, their cost, and their resources.

The last step of the puzzle is, essentially, once the CCTV, GIS, and all of those pieces of information that initially were scattered in multiple places-- once they've come together in Info360 Asset and we've developed a risk analysis to determine where the highest risk pipes are conducted, this is the step where the rehabilitation planning is conducted. In other words, what is the final action? What needs to happen to each one of the assets in the system?

So in here, we have multiple examples under the Rehab tab of Info360 Asset. We got a CCTV decision tree that is going to indicate which pipes have been CCTV'd and which ones needed to be scheduled for CCTV and at what priority. We have the Operation and Maintenance decision tree that GHD developed to determine which pipes needed regular maintenance, as well as the capital improvement plan to determine which pipes need to be replaced, repaired, or renewed.

So let's take a look at this example for the Capital Improvement Project decision tree. So a decision tree is simply a combination of queries in the form of a flowchart, which, it's going to lead all the pipes into a final action. So in this example, we're asking, has the pipe been televised or CCTV'd? If it hasn't been CCTV'd, then let's go ahead and obtain CCTV for those pipes. And we can see the number of pipes that are going through each route.

If it has been CCTV'd, then are there any pipe defects? If not, then no action is needed for these pipes. If true, then what kind of defects does it have? Does the pipe need to be replaced due to the defect severity? Here, we're querying infiltration codes and this query from the CCTV data.

So if any pipe has any of these specific infiltration defects, then we're going to set the pipe to be replaced. If there are no replacement defects, then are there any lining defects-- in other words, any defects that will warrant a liner for that particular pipe? We're looking at B Defects, so breaks, and C defects, so breaks and cracks. If any one of these defects is present in the pipe, then we'll go ahead and conduct a CIP lining.

But we also need to know where the pipe is located at. Is it in a state road or not? And what is the size of the pipe? Because that's going to determine what the final action and the cause of the pipe is going to be. So here we have different actions for CIPP lining.

And if the pipe doesn't need any liner, then let's take a look at whether there are more than 3 point defects in the pipe. So we're looking at a variety of medium to high-severity defects, such as obstructions, fractures, infiltrations. We're looking at collapses, surface damage. And all of these PACP codes that are indicated by the NASSCO standard.

If there are any more than three, then we're going to go ahead and replace the pipe. But we also need to know, again, if it's located under a state road or what the size of the pipe is. So if we look at the Action step, we can see a summary of all of those Rehab actions and the costs. Once again, every action is going to have a different cause depending on whether the pipe is under a state road or depending on its diameter. And the cost is per each or per linear feet.

Now we can go ahead and run the tree once the tree has been finalized and then see the results. So here, we have, once again, for every pipe in the system a result of a final rehab action. So let's take a look at this pipe that needs a replacement.

Once again, here in the Asset Details page, you will scroll all the way down. We can see that this Final Action is Replace. The pipe is between 8 and 12 inches. And the cost is around $93,000.

We can view the decision path that it took to get to the Final Action. So we have the query that we're looking at. And in the right-hand side, we have the result, whether if it's true or not. Looks like this pipe has a True under the higher than 3 point defects, which means that the pipe will need to be replaced. And because of its size, between 0 to 12 inches, and because it's not under a state road, then it's going to get that rehab action and that particular cost.

So once again, with a system-wide report, GHD is able to utilize all of this information to determine which pipes need to be prioritized, as well as what type of-- be conducted, and what the cost is going to be, so they can develop a budget plan for the next CIP period.

ALTON WHITTLE: Thanks, Martha. So as you see there, it's a very powerful tool. And one of the first things that you noticed that Martha showed was there was various different scenarios run in there. So different departments or different uses or different reports even, each could be developed with that vision in place.

So for example, there's an operation of maintenance. That gets an annual report of all the pipes that have been televised that indicate that there's routes or potential blockages. So that goes to a maintenance team. And that might be done internally by Aqua. And then there's this separate decision tree and risk prioritization to look at where they're going to do their capital improvements.

And a good example of that was they just had a five-year plan that they had to submit to the PUC for approval of basically how they wanted to use those funds. This gives them a tool to generate that report, run it. Then they can even change a couple variables and say, well, what if we did this instead? What if we looked at 2 point defects as the cutoff for when we replace a line versus 3? And it takes a matter of a minute or two to run that process again, see how that would be different.

And it then helps them refine their visions and to communicate that across the whole corporation then. It also gives you very good transparency when you're giving public the information about why decisions were made or you're giving the PUC the information or even the regulatory agencies. You're able to specify, here was the decision tree. Here's how we made that analysis happen.

And we looked at it. We verified it. And that looked good to us. And that gave us a budget number. And that really does take that effort down from having to look at so many different data sources individually.

It puts it all in front of you, shows you the decision and why those decisions were made, and really gives you the ability to incorporate a lot more into making that decision valid. So this has been a big step forward. And they've really gotten some value out of that. And they are seeing with the pilot study where they can add additional data to now supplement that and look at the next phase even.

With that, I want to switch chairs a little bit here to collaboration. We've mentioned it throughout. But they really have simplified their data communication. And I'll show you a little bit here.

So just to look at the challenges that they have with communicating just within Pennsylvania, they have six operating centers and over 50 wastewater systems. Each of those systems has a defined project manager who is managing the system. That's their responsibility. And they are hiring-- that project manager's got internal engineers who are doing, like, capacity studies.

They're doing modeling. They're doing, like, reviews of that. But they're also hiring various consulting engineering. GHD's been a consultant engineer for Aqua for probably 25 years now, I think. But we're only one of maybe seven or eight that they really use on a day-to-day basis plus additional ones that they'll pull in for specialization.

So those project managers are managing their own system. They're pulling in their consulting engineers as they need. Plus they have internal field crews and subconsultants. So trying to keep all this managed and share that information in a fair, easy way is really challenging. So this has been a big, big plus.

And then they can use this information then to bid out, develop contracts, for construction or maintenance even, so for cleaning contracts, in a much more organized fashion. And that decision process and that capability to see those reports goes from the field operators who are collecting the data. They see that their data's being used. It gives them a little bit more of a emphasis to collect good data and understand that they have a value in what the process is the whole way up through the management who are looking at these decisions on where to spend budgets and having that confidence that each of the operating centers, each of the different systems are getting a fair review of how they compare to one another in terms of where the priorities are.

So this has been big push for them. They're also really looking to be able to report this stuff out. And Martha will show you some innovative ways that they've been looking at that, whether it's corporate project status for the project managers or even budget tracking or staffing. I don't have that on here but, like, the staffing they need to have in place to get the work done. So with that, I think I'll hand it over to you, Martha.

MARTHA NUNEZ: All right, to supplement Alton's message there in terms of bringing people together, the way that user management is done in Info360 Asset is meant to be a way for different personas to communicate. So as Alton said, we have the GIS professional multiple field crews for each one of the systems, potentially the head of planning, the in-office engineer, which in this case will be GHD's team. So the idea is that Info360 increases accessibility and visibility of data for anyone at the organization, depending on what tasks they want to conduct. So we have three subscription types in Info360 Asset. All of them are being utilized by GHD and Aqua America for this project.

So full access subscription gives any user the capability of conducting any data editing, importing, and exporting, changing the visualization, creating analysis, run the analysis, and so on. So they have full access to the environment. And they can also bring in other people to collaborate, such as the field inspector or the Viewer Only. Field inspectors have a limited visibility of Info360 Asset where they can only view the CCTV inspection portal. So they don't have any access to any information from Aqua America, just the capability of uploading that data.

And collaborating with the full access user, if any of that data needs to be revised or if it gets rejected, they need to go in and fix that and re-upload it, as I showed earlier in my video. So at the moment, Aqua America has a few field inspectors uploading data. And the process is the same for everyone. And I believe there are a few Aqua America people that have View Only access. And that is essentially to be able to understand the reasoning and the way that Info360 Asset is providing all of those risk analysis and rehabilitation results, so GHD can efficiently manage Aqua America's data with full transparency.

In addition to different types of access to Info360 Asset, we also have integrations to external systems, specifically ArcGIS Online, which is something that Aqua America uses and GHD has been regularly using as part of this project. So here, I'm going to show an example of how data can easily be exported to ArcGIS Online and then what capabilities can be used to make better decisions and to track and communicate with the team. So here, under the Integrations tab, a user can add a new integration to ArcGIS Online and simply specify the type of integration and authenticate it the same way that you will log in to your ArcGIS Online web page.

You could log in from here, the Info360 Asset interface. Enable that integration. And once enabled, a user can go under the Data Export and choose the system type as a type of the data that they want to export and choose the ArcGIS Online integration that was created. So here, we're simply going to be exporting some inspection data, as well as risk analysis results. So this is the same process that GHD has conducted to develop some dashboards that they're giving access to Aqua America too.

So let's take a look at this information now in ArcGIS Online. We'll log in the same way we would for any purpose. And then here under the Map viewer, we can visualize all of those risk analysis, CCTV analysis [AUDIO OUT] results, and incorporate them into a dashboard. So once again, here, I'm showing a replica of a dashboard that GHD has developed with Aqua America specific risk analysis results. We have here on the left-hand side, a count of CCTV inspections that have been conducted for each one of the towns and then a summary on the overall CCTV inspection ratings for all of the Aqua systems.

So as Alton mentioned, ArcGIS Online is something that Aqua America already uses. They already use it to track their own budgeting and projects on their side. So this is just an additional way to incorporate all of the Info360 Asset information into their planning projects and make sure that they are defending their decisions and tracking where they're at in the process and how much more they need to finalize their yearly goals in terms of the projects themselves, as well as the budget allocation.

ALTON WHITTLE: So yeah, so this is kind of the point that Aqua is at right now. We've in the last year leveraged all the data. We've gotten supplemental data put in there. We went through some of the planning with them, have done the analysis, and put together the beginnings of this visualization.

And it has really been a good success, especially when you see this visualization to the different levels in the corporation. They can really see what progress they've made in terms of doing condition assessment across the asset. They're able to see where their budgets fit and then as they're coming up in the future, now, track those budgets to the actual work that's being done. And they can look at this.

And again, I kind of mentioned earlier, they can do some recalculations, run it again, and do a comparison on which program would be more efficient. And that's a big plus to this. And with the Esri integration, they can even take those dashboards and with certain limited data even push that out to either the customers or the regulatory compliance agencies, so customers can see where their budgets are being put in place to spend money to keep those assets running properly and what kind of plans are in the future and really, what their rates are being spent at to justify what is being done by Aqua to increase the value of their service.

So these have all been a great benefit. And they've really seen this pilot project as a success. And they're at this point looking for what are the next steps, how are we going to take this to beyond this initial pilot program from the area surrounding the Philadelphia area, spread throughout Pennsylvania, and then potentially even to other states through the management structure, and how do they look at that differently as well in terms of expanding capabilities.

So that leads to the next step here, next steps being the future roadmap. From an integration, they're really looking at this second half of the circle. How can they take what they've done to date-- augment their capabilities within the system in terms of building knowledge? There's some machine learning. We've started to do some preliminaries on this outside of the system.

So for example, where there's unknowns, we'll look at just data analytics for the results from the known condition assessment on the pipes. So if we have 6-inch PVC pipe who have a large number of televised results for, we can use that to forecast to other areas where there's 6-inch PVC pipes that don't have any results, as one example, and use that to augment that-- look at how to automate the data to collection. As Martha mentioned earlier, the ability for field crews to get data right into the system has been a big plus. How can we implement that in other directions as well, so, like, for example, taking flow meters and capacities at pump stations and bring that in on a regular basis to supplement the data, and really then increase that ability to act, develop individual projects to go out on the streets?

In the project area, we're on our third basin rehabilitation right now. And that's been going really well. So what they're going to see is as they complete these, their risk scores, as they come back in, are going to be measured and shown that decrease. So you're going to see what was a 5 level pipe in terms of risk has now been aligned. And now it's down to a 1.

And you'll see that increase or that decrease of risk across the entity and be able to use that as value for what's being reinvested into the assets-- also able to take any of these knowledge lessons learned. They found that they tried lining some of the pipes but didn't do T liners to address the laterals along with it-- didn't get the removal results that they wanted. And that investment of money wasn't as effective. So that goes back in then to the decision tree. And we increase our knowledge in the decision tree and say, well, those prices for those T liners need to be included in with the budget for the projects.