Are You Ready for Big Data?

H istorically, water and wastewater utilities have collected, stored, and analyzed data in silos (i.e., different data management systems and analysis strategies for lab, maintenance, asset, and process data). With increased sensorization, process complexity, and regulation, this paradigm of data management is leading to significant delays in data-driven decision-making and becoming a barrier to innovation. If utilities could take full advantage of advancements in information management and technology, storage and analysis could be more reliable, scalable, and maintainable. This would enable utility staff to improve operations with historical and real-time data-driven insights that come from big-data analysis.