Case study

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services Fills Two Needs with One Tool

Overview
Challenges
Solution
Components

Improving both flood and water quality management with one application

Overview

Home to more than 60 streams and sitting at a hydrological divide, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, contains a vast network of flood-prone headwaters. And the cleanliness of those waterways can impact water quality for many miles downstream.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services is the joint utility that manages flooding and surface water quality for the City of Charlotte and surrounding towns in Mecklenburg County. The utility utilizes AEM’s Contrail® application (now called AEM Elements™ 360) to help with the daunting challenge of keeping up with both flood and water quality issues throughout the county’s nearly 20,000 acres of floodplain and 300 miles of monitored streams.

NOTE: This case study originally referenced Contrail, which has since been replaced by AEM Elements 360. The functionality described here is now fully available in AEM Elements 360.

IMPROVING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Storm Water Services maintains an extensive hydrological monitoring program that has grown to include 52 stream gauges, 72 rain gauges, and a variety of creek cameras across 124 sites – all of which collect data 24/7/365. The AEM Elements 360 application (previously called Contrail) brings all that data together to make it actionable.

Thresholds for automated alerts are defined around local parameters for flooding and water quality. Alerts link to comprehensive dashboards and camera imagery that equip workers and emergency services with the information they need to make faster, smarter decisions as they size up each situation

Joshua McSwain,
Senior Business Analyst

“When Contrail [now called AEM Elements 360] came on board, it was our one-stop toolbox…All the alarming,dashboards, everything that we had in multiple locations before, were now consumed into one toolbox…Simple maps to go in and look at details of gauges and sensor types. Turning on and off layers…It finally all came together when we installed Contrail.”

Overcoming operational constraints

The Challenges

Prior to adopting our Contrail software (now AEM Elements 360), Storm Water Services utilized a variety of different applications to view fragments of data, but they had no efficient way to bring all those fragments together. This constrained their ability to interpret the data and gain adequate situational understanding before sending workers and emergency services into the field.

1. Data fragmentation

Flood and water quality data were fragmented across disparate applications; there wasn’t a single source of truth.

2. Limited alerting capabilities

The utility needed the ability to generate customized alerts that linked to dashboards summarizing current water conditions.

3. Insufficient camera integration

The utility wanted to better integrate camera imagery with other data sources to enhance situational awareness and facilitate decision-making.

AEM's decision support application

The Solution

AEM Elements 360 (previously called Contrail) enables Storm Water Services and organizations like it to ingest vast quantities of differently formatted data into one central hub, thereby overcoming the problem of data fragmentation. To help their different stakeholders maintain situational awareness, each group within Storm Water Services – flood and water quality management – has its own customized dashboards integrated with camera imagery. Each group also has customized alerts to keep their stakeholders informed of the most important information.

MULTI-TENANT SUPPORT FOR DIVERSE USERS

The AEM Elements 360 application (formerly Contrail) was built to support multiple tenants with different needs – just like the flood and water quality management teams at Storm Water Services.

CENTRALIZED DATA AND ALERTING

Our application is capable of ingesting data from many sources across many communication protocols and supports customized outbound messaging in email and SMS text formats.

PARTNERSHIP AND TRAINING

AEM provides ongoing training and support, so the teams at Storm Water Services can leverage our tools and information with confidence to protect the communities of Mecklenburg County.

An evolving partnership

Partnerships tend to flourish or wither based on their success. Storm Water Services initially adopted AEM’s Contrail application (now called AEM Elements 360) to support their flood monitoring and notification program. More recently, the utility expanded its use of the application to also support its surface water quality management efforts. Looking ahead, they are considering yet another expansion – this time to support their management of air quality and/or groundwater quality.

The Components