Case Introduction

Nordre Follo is a growing municipality with a strong focus on keeping costs down for its residents, while ensuring good drinking water and protecting the environment around them.

Nordre Follo Municipality was established on January 1, 2020, by merging Ski and Oppegård municipalities. With the merger, city water professionals soon began experiencing frequent error validations when their two old network systems were combined. As the previous municipalities had been working apart, their data were entered differently, thus creating a data quality challenge for both the planning & operation departments.

The specific lack of quality data meant that in many cases, it was often necessary for the city to go out to check accuracy, which took a lot of time. Pipelines projects were often selected using only operational/project opinions, and not always according to fact/data insights.

With a few simple keystrokes in the data|APX^® platform, everyone in the Nordre Follo organization has access to a modern analytics tool that can provide daily “state of the network” updates, presented in innovative graphs and dynamic maps.

Q&A

How is data|APX^® used in everyday life at Nordre Follo Municipality?
We are starting to use the software continuously in projects now, and we are adding SCADA data as we speak. In the future, we will also implement this approach into the operations department, so that we can streamline the work for operations to find likely water leaks at major events. There, APX10 has hit the mark in most cases. Thanks to the Inflow & Infiltration module, we also now have the possibility to work with target figures, which creates internal engagement with our colleagues in the operations department as well.

Can you give concrete examples of how you use data|APX^® in your water & wastewater departments?
We use it actively for leakage detection in specific areas. We can also see where the platform assesses the worst sections of our pipeline network, allowing us to start at the top of the priority list and work our way across the network area. This saves us two to four people normally looking “in the dark.” It makes us very accurate and saves time.

The project department also uses the software tool from APX10 instead of their own assessments around the most preferred action plan when it comes to pipeline projects.

Going forward we will actively use the Inflow & Infiltration module to limit unwanted releases to the environment.

What are the opportunities of working strategically and operationally with your own utility data?
The possibilities are enormous. We as a municipality will be accurate, both in planning and operations. It creates positive energy across the whole enterprise as we see that the actions give good and early benefits.

What is the trend in Norway when it comes to digitalization in the water industry, and hence increased data use among municipalities?
Many municipalities have technical solutions for digitization. But there are many out there who do not specify what need they have for the actual use of the solutions. Often the solutions become a bunch of licenses, with little follow-up internally to ever get a real benefit out of it. Experience also shows that often when a solution is sold, there is little follow-up from the provider, which again leads to half-baked solutions.

What other challenges do you expect to be solved in the future by increased data use?
We will increase our data quality further and get rid of extraneous data from the network. Also, we aim to reduce fees to residents by including impact/condition assessment before project start.