A Utility Manager’s Dream, Using Smart Infrastructure and Intelligent Dashboards with Data Visualization to Drive Management, Operations, and Maintenance Decisions

From regulatory officials and the communities they serve, Utility Managers are being asked to make increasingly complex decisions about how to prioritize financial, labor, and equipment resources to meet increasing system performance expectations. The onset of the digital age provided an opportunity for better decision making based on actual system performance metrics, but the collected data is often difficult to access and the volume of data needed to support these decisions can be overwhelming.The City of Columbia (City) Department of Utilities and Operations is currently undergoing a major transformation in the approach of using data to improve decision making. City leadership has made a deliberate decision to implement best management practices across the utility including establishing smart infrastructure and visualization tools to support data driven decisions.The City of Columbia is the first large public utility in South Carolina to face a major Consent Decree (CD) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a result of the CD and the many management, operational, and infrastructure improvements underway, many utilities in the Southeast are closely watching Columbia for lessons that can be adapted to their utility.The CD obligations have strict implementation timeframes for countless requirements including business process improvements, operation and maintenance (O&M) enhancements, and approximately $750 million in capital improvements; all of which will have profound impacts on the City. The use of smart infrastructure and dashboards are a corner stone of implementing, organizing, and optimizing many of these new practices.This paper and presentation will address how the smart infrastructure and dashboards were developed, how the underlying information is accessed, and how the City of Columbia uses the tools to identify and act on trends, and improve productivity and results, all while reducing the complexity and stress of accessing the information. Implementation of these tools has resulted in a better understanding of how utilities can leverage available data in making decisions that improve system performance for less cost.