Visualizing Big Data to Guide Water Resource Decisions

The Catawba-Wateree Water Management Group (CWWMG) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit group whose membership consists of 18 public water suppliers and Duke Energy. Black & Veatch assisted the CWWMG with the completion of a Water Quality Master plan whose purpose was to inform CWWMG members about trends and forecasts in water quality that may impact production of clean, safe drinking water and the use of raw water for cooling thermal power plants. The CWWMG formed a Technical Advisory Committee to guide the analysis of the water quality analysis. The project compiled 50 years’ worth of water quality data in the Basin. The TAC developed a ranking of the parameters that are of greatest concern and the water quality trends of those parameters analyzed. General water quality conditions were characterized with a water quality index based on the historic monitoring. In addition, the current and future water quality conditions were quantified using a Monte Carlo estimation of terrestrial water quality runoff. Hyperspectral satellite imagery was used to characterize aquatic chlorophyll, cyanobacteria, total phosphorous, and total copper concentrations along with terrestrial total phosphorous and total copper levels. Selected mitigation approaches that have been used in the Basin were highlighted. A customized cloud-based Water Quality Platform was developed to allow the CWWMG to visualize and analyze the complied data.