How Lillestrøm effectively handles environmental challenges
May 2, 2022 8:43:06 AM • Written by: InfoTiles
The collection of data across many sources gives Lillestrøm municipality unique insight into various environmental challenges. Now they are well equipped to handle rising sea levels, torrential rain and floods in a resource-efficient way.
Data on external hydrological conditions such as floods, precipitation, temperature and water in basins are important information for the municipalities of eastern Norway. Lillestrøm's close connection to the rivers Glomma, Nitelva, Leira and the nature reserve Øyeren also means that protection of the aquatic environment is particularly important. Like many other municipalities in Norway, Lillestrøm has an ageing infrastructure for water and sewage. By combining data, they gain insight to better deal with environmental challenges such as surface water and overflows (which can result from operational incidents), rising sea levels, torrential rain and floods.
Real-time analysis and modelling
With the digital platform from InfoTiles, data flows across sensors, maintenance systems, open data sources, control systems and more. It provides real-time analysis and modelling directly in the solution.
"We can set up formulas for calculating water flow as a function of level, speed and pressure. We can add statistical indicators, numerical differentiation or integration, decomposition of time series and temporal functions across data sources in one and the same platform. This is completely unique. It gives us new insights into the data we already have and we can see connections we have not seen before. For us therefore, it saves lots of resources", says Asgeir Hagen, an environmental engineer in Lillestrøm municipality.
(Translated from Norwegian)
Tailored to user groups
In Lillestrøm, InfoTiles is used in planning, operation and maintenance, and is well adapted for crews to use in the field with a tablet. Tailor-made dashboards for specialised user groups allow them to retrieve information specific to their needs.
"We like that we have the opportunity to set up analyses and dashboards based on roles, needs and domain-specific processes. Because the solution uses the municipality's own central Active Directory, the users are divided into the same groups as they are in MS Teams. This is very flexible", continues Asgeir Hagen.
For Lillestrøm municipality, it was important that InfoTiles was not tied to proprietary data sources or protocols for communication, as sensors and communication technology are constantly changing.
"This is especially important since the municipality uses different suppliers for measuring various parameters", stresses Erlend Berg, a business architect in the digitisation department in Lillestrøm municipality.
The goal of the solution is to save time
InfoTiles is a young company with a mission to create smarter and more sustainable cities by leveraging data. Here, the expertise of former management consultants and engineers with experience in water and sewage meets. In 2020, they won the award for the smart city solution under the auspices of the Norwegian Data Association and were named innovation partner of the year by Microsoft for their collaboration with Lillestrøm municipality.
The goal of InfoTiles with this solution is to gain new insight, which leads to better and more efficient maintenance. Errors are detected faster, which makes planning easier. In addition, data becomes available in the field, so that troubleshooting and the task of finding the right data fields is completed quicker. This results in faster work done, and less driving to and from the office to conduct analysis in desktop-based systems.
"The way we have developed the solution means that it is used across the municipality. In environmental engineering, for example, the use is specifically related to water and wastewater related challenges such as surface water, overflow, leak detection, water quality, rising sea levels and floods", says InfoTiles CEO, Johnny Gunneng.
