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By the morning on Thursday, September 13th, millions of people had fled or taken refuge in shelters. Flights were canceled, roads were shut down, and several states declared a state of emergency in preparation. Minute by minute, news agencies update colorful maps tracking the path of Hurricane Florence. For wastewater utilities in the area, it’s a multi-billion dollar waiting game to determine the extent of the damage on treatment facilities.

What happens to sewer treatment plants during a natural disaster like a hurricane? Six years after Superstorm Sandy, the devastation on the water and wastewater industry is still fresh. New York and New Jersey struggled with power outages at plants, contaminants in drinking water, broken sewer lines and the inability to treat wastewater coming into plants, resulting in 11 billion gallons of sewage overflows. See how Climate Central broke down sewage overflows here.

All of this results in an enormous bill for sewer utilities. The New Jersey government recently estimated the cost in damages to water and wastewater industries from Superstorm Sandy to be $2.6 billion. Climate Central put the cost of repairing New York sewage treatment plants alone to be nearly $2 billion. And that’s just the recovery step. New York and New Jersey also received $569 million in grants from the EPA’s Storm Mitigation Loan Program for improvements to water and wastewater facilities to reduce the risk of damage from future natural disasters, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

These issues are not unique to New York and New Jersey. An American Water Works Association preliminary assessment estimated $2.25 billion dollars’ worth of damage to drinking water infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. After Hurricane Maria struck, it took Puerto Rico almost 9 months to restore the water system to a fully operational level for 96% of customers, and residents’ water woes are far from over. And with the effects of climate change exacerbating the severity of these storms, we can expect similar challenges in the years to come.

All Eyes on Florence

The Carolinas were set to take the brunt of Hurricane Florence. On September 7th, North Carolina declared a state of emergency, followed by South Carolina on September 8th. Four days later, when the track shifted west and Georgia found itself in the path, the state declared a state of emergency as well. Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington DC were warned about flooding and excessive rainfall as a result of the storm. Officials monitored changes in the storm’s pattern and warned residents not to get complicit when the hurricane category dropped.

Analyzing Design Flow data from thousands of wastewater treatment plants from the largest states in Hurricane Florence’s projected path, WatrHub has mapped out the US sewer infrastructure at risk in the coming days. This covers a whopping 16,537 MGD of sewer flow or approximately 1/3 of the total US sewer infrastructure flow on any given day.

 

A Measure in MGD (Millions of Gallons Per Day) of sewer flow that is in the projected path states. A total of 16,537 MGD could be affected by Hurricane Florence. This total represents 1/3 of the total US sewer infrastructure design flow based on data analyzed for all wastewater treatment plants over 1 MGD. Map Courtesy of NOAA.

 

The water industry is evolving, and major storms are helping shape the future of water infrastructure. With programs like the Storm Mitigation Loan program, and with the increasing severity of hurricanes and other natural disasters, utilities have a responsibility to focus not only on repair, but on prevention. Sanitary sewer overflows for example, including the 11 billion gallons of raw sewage overflow after Superstorm Sandy, can threaten water quality, public health and cause damage to property. But how much can utilities do to minimize the volume of sewer overflows and reduce inflow and infiltration into the system? Greg Quist, President & CEO of SmartCover Systems, puts us in the mind of a sewer collection system operator in the wake of a storm.

“Hurricane Florence is going to hit us in three days. There’s not enough time to make pipeline repairs or do upsizing. Utilities can certainly deploy sandbags where they think overflows are bound to occur and direct the untreated sewage-laced waters to a more desirable place. That’s better than nothing, but they are still going to have massive spills.”

But there are measures operators can take to protect their systems. Greg and his team, for example, provide reassurance during these emergencies by minimizing sewer spills. “We show utilities where they have build-ups, grit accumulation, fats, oils, and grease (FOG), so they can tactically direct resources to where their system capacity is stressed, and in a couple of days, clean out those areas before the storm hits to maximize collection system capacity.” Smart Sewer Infrastructure like this, with the capability to handle disasters, will be more and more critical as storm severity increases.

Based on what we have learned from past storms, how should Wastewater Utilities be preparing for storms like Florence in the future?

3 Steps Utilities Can Take to Manage Effects of a Hurricane

1. Have an Emergency Plan in Place

Ensure operators are properly trained to handle any weather emergencies that could affect the area. Make a communication game plan and update emergency response contact lists to ensure emergency personnel has access to the plant. The EPA has a variety of guidance documents and other resources for utility preparedness, including a Scenario-Based Projected Changes Map and a Storm Surge Inundation Map.

2. Make the Right Preparations in the Days before the Storm

Standby generators should be available and maintained. A variety of operational issues, including sanitary sewer overflows, can happen as a result of power failures. There should be enough fuel to run emergency operations not only for the duration of the storm, but throughout the recovery period as well. Wastewater treatment plants are often in low elevation areas, and are especially susceptible to flooding. Getting equipment, vehicles, and materials in an area safe from flooding in the days leading up to a hurricane prevents unnecessary damage. The 48 hours before an extreme weather event can make or break the recovery process.

3. Have Vendors on Staff to Support Emergency Response Efforts

After a hurricane, affected water and wastewater treatment plants are faced with a long to-do list. Repairing, drying out, or replacing key damaged infrastructure, repairing and flushing distribution and sewer lines, and testing water for bacteria and chemicals to maintain compliance with EPA are all high priority projects that must be completed as quickly as possible. Prior relationships and plans that be trigged and deployed in a matter of days saves valuable time, resources and possible lives.

Thinking About The Future

Other long term infrastructure and operational prevention measures offer hope to utilities in Hurricane Alley and beyond. These include finding alternative/secondary water supplies from re-use, stormwater or desalination, decreasing dependency on a singular water source and protecting population centers in emergencies. Operators that are trained to respond to natural disasters further prepare utilities for the worst.

Persistence of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change will continue to threaten utilities across the country long after plants recover from Hurricane Florence. By preparing emergency protocol in the months before a storm, preparing equipment days before the storm, and being connected with the right people to make repairs, as well as keeping an eye out for solutions like the SmartCover Systems, utilities can set themselves up for the smoothest possible recovery after a hurricane.

WatrHub Inc, a Digital Intelligence Company, is pioneering datasets inspired by the needs of our clients, and we are eager to find new ways to shed light on the water industry. Talk to us about your company’s ideal water market dataset, or let us help determine what water infrastructure data would be most relevant to your needs. See what type of insights WatrHub can uncover at www.watrhub.com.

The age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is upon us. AI is disrupting every business process and every workflow. AI ecosystems are emerging in major cities with prominent force. Most experts believe that the global AI market will be worth 100’s of billions of dollars in the next 10 years, and China believes that its own AI industry can be worth $150B / year. Toronto and Montreal have become internationally renowned AI hubs, with dozens of businesses emerging and a combination of over 170 startups in both major cities.

t is reminiscent of the Tech Boom in the 1990’s. New tech startups were popping up every day and every major corporation was figuring out their IT strategy. When the boom was over, it resulted in a tech graveyard of companies that were not able to adapt to the changing times.

On the buyers end, the tech crash resulted in a number of failed multi-million dollar IT projects that crushed careers. The key to success was the ability to turn new technology capabilities into new and unprecedented business value.

There are many parallels between the tech boom of the 1990’s and the current AI race and, like the 1990’s, there will be winners and losers in this AI race to success.

We At WatrHub Inc., are an AI-powered Digital Intelligence company uncovering market insights for water infrastructure. In just a few years we have amassed the world’s largest data warehouse in the U.S. water and wastewater utilities market. We enable our clients to answer their burning questions on their markets and sales opportunities, surfacing new insights that were not possible to get before.

Most of the largest players in our industry use WatrHub to bring their sales teams into the era of analytics and precision sales. We’ve not only built a powerful data engine, but figured out how to embed the data into our clients’ workflows for them to achieve compelling results, like 300% increase in their sales pipeline conversions.

Through this journey we have learned a lot about the realities of building a business that commercializes AI technology.

Below are 5 unique views we hold on building disruptive business models based on AI.

1. You need deep Domain Expertise

The challenge with data is that unless it’s actionable and actually actioned on, it’s useless. You can spend millions of dollars on a Data Analytics project but if it doesn’t generate 3 to 5 times the ROI that most executives look for, then it’s meaningless. And the only way to really fine-tune the data and understand what’s valuable and actionable and what’s not is to have deep domain expertise into customers problems.

In WatrHub’s case, we are aggregating data from 70,000+ entities in our market, hundreds of government data sources, and hundreds of millions of public documents. There are enough data points to keep us busy for a lifetime of analyzing and ingesting this data. No standards exist for this type of data reporting and each state and each jurisdiction does it differently. However, not all the data out there actually creates value for clients, or is represented in ways that our clients can interpret. How we bridge that gap is by having deep expertise into our client’s business and markets.

2. You need the ability to see things End to End

On one end of the spectrum you have the critical insights that users are looking for. On the other end of the spectrum you have the data and tools available in order to generate the insights. Data is comparable to the role of raw materials and the insights that are generated are the final product. While you are defining the insights to be developed, it is also important to simultaneously be thinking about the data that is available to generate those insights.

In WatrHub’s case, we have to understand the customer problems, what is possible from a data and AI perspective, what’s the best way to integrate into user workflows, and bring it all together into a winning solution for our clients. If we are not thinking about all things at the same time, we miss key pieces of the puzzle in solving our clients’ business needs. Specifically, if we overcommit on ‘understanding the customer problems’ — we will be uncovering lots of issues that can’t actually be solved by data that’s available in a feasible way. If we focused too much time on building the data engine, we spend a lot of resources capturing data that doesn’t create actual value for our clients.

3. You need to build Multi-Disciplinary teams to succeed.

Generally, industry experts are not going to be very data-savvy since they have been operating for decades without these new data capabilities, and the tech world is constantly changing. However, the experts will have a deep understanding of the problem space and the existing workflows. Different skills are required in sourcing data, managing data, and generating insights. The data scientists will bias towards building cool tools and immersing themselves in the data, and it can be difficult for them to step back and see the customer’s needs. Having a multi-disciplinary team bringing different expertise ensures every base is being covered.

WatrHub’s team includes a unique blend of water experts, client success managers, data analysts, software engineers, product managers, and AI engineers. Each bring a different perspective and skill, and they are all necessary for any of our products to succeed in the market.

4. AI-powered Insights have to (initially) match Expert Instincts.

One of the challenges with AI and most Data Analytics projects is that by definition, they are disrupting business processes and workflows that have been entrenched for many years and working at a certain, predictable speed and accuracy. Users that are comfortable with the previous process will naturally push back at change that creates risks and uncertainties. They will find holes in the data because, by nature of AI, it is not going to be perfect or accurate in the beginning. Also, these AI-powered insights have to generate conclusions that the users can make sense of. The reality is that the experts are likely to be right quite often, early on in your Data Journey. So, initially the goal is not to actually get accurate results and prove the experts wrong. The goal is to get the experts on-board with using data and offering their expertise to use the data in their workflow and decision-making.

In WatrHub’s case, we are disrupting the sales process in the water infrastructure market, which has been set in its way for decades. We have learned that you cannot possibly take the expert out of the equation. Their instincts are invaluable and AI is far from being able to replicate or replace it. So, we are simply an accelerator for them. Our job is to extract critical market insights that our users do not have the tools or resources to do, so that our users can do their job more effectively.

5. AI-powered Insights and Human Judgement will co-exist for years.

We took on a number of R&D projects to ‘fully-automate’ certain functions and what we have found is that based on available technology today, we are not at a point where we can replace human judgement for critical business processes. It is one thing to build algorithms to recommend your next movie on Netflix or your next purchase on Amazon. Those predictions will not require human intervention in every case. The impact of a 10% error rate is inconsequential.

However, for most critical business processes, a 10% error rate is fatal. WatrHub is essentially delivering insights, predictions, and recommendations on where client’s should focus their sales & marketing efforts. The cost of sales is high in the water sector and our clients are spending anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars on sales every year. Therefore, the cost of inaccurate or irrelevant data is high, which is why we have built a team of analysts to curate the data and make sure it is as actionable as possible before it goes to a client. And we have built feedback loops to understand what data is actionable and is not actionable so we can refine.

The Journey To Success In This AI Race

Like many others, we are still in the nascent stages of the AI race, developing and growing with the aspirations to be a winner in this AI race. The 5 views that I have developed over the years leading WatrHub provides a great starting point into your journey of the AI race. If you are already in this exciting AI race, I hope the 5 viewpoints were insightful. We welcome the opportunity to exchange notes with you. Because the world of AI in business is still relatively small it allows us to learn and succeed together in this exciting journey. Let’s build an AI future!

WatrHub Inc, a Digital Intelligence Company, is pioneering data sets inspired by the needs of our clients, and we are eager to find new ways to shed light on the water industry.