Entitled "The Age of AI and ML is NOW for the water industry", infinitii ai infinitii ai contributed a feature article to the "Digitization" issue of Western Canada Water. The article documents infinitii ai's product evolution into AI-enabled Machine Learning that resulted in a new technology platform launched in 2022 at WEFTEC. Since the article appeared, several customers have launched successful AI and ML-driven projects – one of which is capturing and analyzing over one billion points of data using infinitii ai's advanced machine-learning and quality assurance software.
The infinitii dataworks platform offers almost infinite scalability in support of advanced Machine Learning solutions for environmental data collection, storage and real-time analytics.
One of the most exciting products developed on that platform is infinitii face (which stands for flowworks advanced calculation engine) pro. It’s a streaming analytics application for data transformation that allows you to add logic and algorithms for real-time processing. Users can deploy Machine Learning to manage and operationalize production-ready models for generating new data or output events such as predictions. You can build analytic models that act on sensor data or other data sources with its built-in script editor, using existing scripts from open-source Python and R libraries or ones you create.
Excerpted from Western Canada Water Magazine Digitization issue
Use cases for infinitii face pro include forecasting, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance and failure prediction to automate flood extent and stormwater runoff prediction.
Forecasting anomaly detection predictive maintenance and failure prediction
The types of advanced calculations easily performed with infinitii face pro include Soil and Water Integrated Model (SWIM) calculations that track and predict climate and land use change impacts at a regional scale, and Evapotranspiration (ET) calculations used to estimate soil-moisture storage based on precipitation deficit and the maximum water-holding capacity of the soil.
Consider this quote:
“What we love about infinitii face pro is that our data engineers and scientists can write Python and R scripts using their preferred development environment and then copy and paste the code into face pro and have it running system wide quickly and efficiently,” said Luis Galindo, Senior Data Scientist at Kerr Wood Leidal Associates Ltd.
Industry-disrupting innovation
infinitii face pro is joined in the infinitii ai product suite by infinitii flowworks, a software application that is trusted and has been operating in a growing growing customer base of North America's largest Smart City water infrastructure utilities since 2014. It’s a powerful predictive analytics software suite that performs real-time analysis, checks flow monitoring status and sets alarms through a single interface accepting all types of data from any source. Recently infinitii flowworks has been adopted by Core & Main for a U.S. national distribution agreement as part of Core & Main’s Core+ solutions.
Here is a Core & Main quote from Western Canada Water Magazine:
“As we assembled our Core+ tools, we determined that infinitii ai’s flowworks offers the solution we need for this project,” said Wes Whitley, senior director of National Sales at Core & Main. “Data neutrality provided by infinitii flowworks gives a required level of comfort to our other technology and manufacturing partners that allows us to truly innovate with their technologies versus being locked in or locked out from utilizing strategically important data.”
Detect storm events that match defined rainfall criteria
Two other new Machine Learning applications from infinitii ai: The first is infinitii auto i&i, currently used by York Region after being Beta-tested with AECOM in York Region’s long-term flow monitoring program – one of the largest and most advanced flow and rainfall monitoring programs in North America.
Auto I&I detects storm events that match defined rainfall criteria. By automating Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) data gathering and reports, municipal water treatment engineers can quickly see which areas of their systems are most impacted by a storm event and visualize real-time I&I metrics on a Geographic Information System (GIS) map.
Perform QA and QC on sensor data outliers
The second ML application is infinitii auto qa/qc, chosen by the Region of Peel for one of Canada’s largest Flow and Rainfall Data Delivery in Canada led by another valued engineering integration partner – SCG Flowmetrix Technical Services. The software performs Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) on any sensor data outliers that may distort results or trigger false alerts. Machine Learning models provide flags and predicted values based on data identified as sensor errors. Problem data is identified for further action in the following ways:
Data anomalies are flagged for further investigation by engineers and data analysts in their manual workflow
Certain anomalies may be deemed acceptable, and automatically eliminated from the data stream
Other anomalies may be automatically substituted with appropriate data values so operational parameters are maintained to make real-time predictions
Region of Peel deployment
To provide an idea of the data scalability of this Machine Learning technology, the Region of Peel is deploying 350 sensors throughout its sewer network and more than 30 rain gauges to monitor and collect data for hydraulic modelling, capacity assessments, inflow and infiltration remediation, flood forecasting, regulatory reporting requirements, and more. Real-time data will provide critical and actionable information during extreme weather events and will enable Peel Region to proactively plan sewer network maintenance.
“Over one billion points of data will be captured and analyzed over the life of this project, and advanced machine-learning and quality assurance software will drive more actionable insights for Peel Region,” said Sam Mills, Vice President at SCG Flowmetrix.
Out of the lab and into production systems
The infinitii ai team is in full agreement with Bill Gates when he says there is a new era in software that is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet. Our customers routinely rely on their time series data to delivery insights on infrastructure systems that protect human health and preserve the world’s most abundant and precious natural resource. To learn more please explore our products for Smart City Water Infrastructure and read the full article in Western Canada Water Magazine.