GHD digitises water catchment surveys
16 November 2017
GHD: A new
digital application that
streamlines
environmental work has earned GHD’s Digital team recognition
at the Victorian Spatial Excellence Awards in Australia.
The company won the Spatial Enablement Award for making the process of
conducting sanitary surveys of drinking
water catchments more efficient
and less prone to error.
The purpose of these surveys is to identify sources of microbial
pathogens in water catchments and systematically quantify the risk to
human health.
The cost, risk and usability of this surveying process have now been
significantly improved, thanks to GHD’s in-house application development
capabilities, combined with data collection and visualisation tools from
ESRI.
“Normally, scientists, surveyors and engineers spend a lot of time
transferring data collected in the field into a digital format, then
classifying all the surveys for each catchment, followed by calculating
all intermediate and cumulative results, and finally transferring the
information into a report,” Mina Jahanshahi, GHD’s Senior Advisor –
Location Intelligence, says.
“Each step is not only time-consuming, it also increases the chances of
errors creeping up somewhere in the process.
“Our new approach enables people to focus on the core of environmental
work – drawing conclusions from the
data – instead of having to act as
database managers.
“The process is easily repeatable for sanitary survey projects across
Australia. This is especially important since sanitary surveys have to
be undertaken at regular intervals under environmental regulations.”
GHD’s new approach has been used by
Melbourne Water,
SEQWater and
Barwon
Water.
On site, the user utilises their preferred device to complete a ‘smart’
questionnaire that dynamically selects and presents questions based on
previous answers. The cumulative risks are calculated and presented live
depending on the responses, and can be further refined when the
scientist returns to the office.
The result is a clear, streamlined and repeatable process that can be
done in a consistent manner by different people in the field. Every
stakeholder can see online where the surveys are taken, what the results
are, and which surveys are still outstanding.
All surveys are kept in a digital form, including photo evidence and
written comments, so no data is lost in conversion. The end report can
be immediately generated using a Python script.
Kumar Parakala, GHD’s Global Digital Leader, says, “The water sector is
on the cusp of digital transformation. This is an example of what’s
possible when you take an analogue and time-consuming process into a
digital environment. We can use digital tools to streamline and
automate, freeing up people to apply their domain knowledge and develop
insights.
--ENDS--
Source: GHD - www.ghd.com
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