Water Utilities

Client: Suez Water New York

Location: Ramapo Valley, New Jersey, USA

Challenge. To deliver a tool capable of evaluating and managing additional supply production within existing permit limits.

Solution. INTERA developed a decision support tool (DST) to provide operational personnel with a set of decision-making tools to analyze and manage future water supply alternatives. The DST is contained in a dynamic, systems modeling platform, that provides a graphical and intuitive framework for modeling complex interactions across multiple systems, representing decision processes, as well as performing optimization and uncertainty analyses. In conjunction with results from linked watershed and groundwater flow models, also developed by INTERA, the DST identifies the best (most economical, most sustainable, lowest impact, etc.) approach to maximizing production and meeting regulatory permit requirements. The DST and flow models provide guidance about the consequences of various pumping configurations, while meeting the regulatory flow, especially during extended periods of drought.

Client: Tampa Bay Water

Location: Tampa Bay, Florida, USA

Challenge. To address the increasing complexity and enhance the resiliency of the agency’s water supply management system through digital transformation.

Solution. Tampa Bay Water is Florida’s largest wholesale public water provider—delivering some 260 million gallons per day of drinking water to meet the needs of over 2.4 million residents in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas counties. Over the last 15 years, the agency has reduced its dependency on groundwater by adding capacity via a desalination plant and a surface water reservoir. The addition of these new water supply facilities has increased the complexity of the agency’s water supply management approach which demanded Tampa Bay Water to digitally transform. INTERA’s Alison Adams helped champion this transformation process through the development and implementation of a roadmap that ultimately led to developing a decision support system (DSS) for Tampa Bay Water’s source management and planning activities. The DSS is providing benefits that include:

Tampa Bay Water now employs an adaptive management approach for planning and operating their water supply facilities. The key feature of this approach is the use of feedback from operational decisions to planning decisions which leads to periodic re-evaluation of goals, objectives, needs, and actions. Tampa Bay Water’s DSS facilitates this source management strategy by providing information and knowledge in a more responsive and effective manner.