Cincinnati optimizes combined system capacity using dynamic control

The MSD’s WWIP uses several approaches to reduce overflows. It includes a systematic effort to remove stormwater from the system through sewer separations and a commitment to using green infrastructure, where practical, to reduce the volume of runoff that enters the combined sewers. These two approaches together reduce overflows in the most cost effective way. However, the increase of...

The heart of this initiative has been the development and deployment of a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that allows the utility to operate their collection system as an extension of the receiving water resource recovery facility (WRRF). Sensors, such as level sensors and flow monitors tied into this system, provide the data that enables operational optimization. The MSD...

With the right hardware and software in place, data streams feeding real-time information, and an interface that enabled users to see the conditions in the collection system, the MSD had a powerful tool to improve operations during wet weather. One of the first applications of the Watershed SCADA system’s analytical power was the prediction of flow at the main WRRF. Relationships were...

The MSD also leveraged its new visibility into the collection system’s hydraulic conditions to improve the operation of its remote wet-weather storage and treatment facility. Originally, this facility was designed to operate based on the condition in the interceptor immediately adjacent. It would take flow into offline storage when flow in the interceptor reached a certain level, would...

The visibility afforded by the SCADA system’s display of conditions within the collection system in real-time has created a significant shift in wet-weather operations at the MSD. No longer is the utility unaware to what is happening within its sewers during and after rain events, and no longer is it limited to the static capacities of a predominantly gravity-driven system to convey flows....

Wet Weather Operational Optimization Manager Reese Johnson works at Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati. For more information, contact the author by email at reese.johnson@cincinnati-oh.gov.