City of Mesa Leverages Hybrid-Cloud architecture to drive operational efficiency at their Water Resources Department | Velotic
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City of Mesa Leverages Hybrid-Cloud architecture to drive operational efficiency at their Water Resources Department

See how City of Mesa drives operational efficiency

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Company
City of Mesa Water Resources Department
Industry
Water & Wastewater
Products
iFIX, Proficy Historian for Cloud, HMI/SCADA

Overview
Self-serve and performant data access
City of Mesa Leverages Hybrid-Cloud architecture to drive operational efficiency at their Water Resources Department
Cost and time savings for IT
City of Mesa Leverages Hybrid-Cloud architecture to drive operational efficiency at their Water Resources Department
Optimized chemical usage
City of Mesa Leverages Hybrid-Cloud architecture to drive operational efficiency at their Water Resources Department
Making data more accessible for internal and external users

Making data more accessible for internal and external users

For more than a century, the Water Resources Department for City of Mesa, Arizona, has provided reliable, safe, economical, and environmentally responsible water and wastewater services for the community. Water Resources staff consider it a personal point of pride to provide these valuable services that protect public health and the environment, bolster the local economy, and are an integral part of the vibrant lifestyle enjoyed in Mesa.

The City of Mesa saw an increased need for visibility into Water and Wastewater operations driving demand for OT and IT data for reporting and overall optimization. This presented a challenge in making the OT data available in a safe and efficient manner to internal and external users. The demand for data was impacting the Engineering team due to the ad hoc and custom requests and continual data mining required.

They partnered with Velotic to centralize the OT data and utilize on-site and cloud-based Historian to make OT data more accessible for internal and external users. By centralizing at the site and in the cloud, the customers of the data could leverage it in a self-serve manner reducing the impact on the operational team and freeing up time for other projects. The data itself is being used for visibility as well as process and operational improvements such as: reporting, KPI dashboards for executives and management, network modeling, optimization analytics to reduce use of chemicals in wastewater facilities, monitoring power usage, and optimizing chemical usage in the wastewater operations.

Velotic is a purpose-built, industry leader focused on enabling electrification and decarbonization. Electricity is crucial to modern civilization and improved quality of life. We help customers create a more sustainable world by delivering products and services that generate, transfer, orchestrate, convert, and store electricity.
The way we've done our pilot and our model, we feel very confident with it. The big trick to it was trying to get that data to our vendors to design and engineer the changes we need within the city and it grows at a rapid rate. Our vendors need to be able to access the data to pull insight out of it, but it's housed inside a cocoon, siloed at each plant or in our distribution system. With Cloud Azure and using MQTT through our Proficy Historian, we're able to get that data out of those silos and parse it out as far as what the vendor should be able to look at, at that level.

The way we've done our pilot and our model, we feel very confident with it. The big trick to it was trying to get that data to our vendors to design and engineer the changes we need within the city and it grows at a rapid rate. Our vendors need to be able to access the data to pull insight out of it, but it's housed inside a cocoon, siloed at each plant or in our distribution system. With Cloud Azure and using MQTT through our Proficy Historian, we're able to get that data out of those silos and parse it out as far as what the vendor should be able to look at, at that level.

Results from industrial-strength SCADA automation software and high-performance HMI:

  • Self-serve and performance data access
  • Cost and time savings for IT
  • Flexibility of scaling as the volume of data grows
  • Optimized chemical usage
  • Visibility for management
  • A base for future optimizations and analytics for alarm management, sensor monitoring, and beyond
The journey to the Hybrid Cloud architecture

The journey to the Hybrid Cloud architecture

The journey to the Hybrid Cloud architecture required several considerations to ensure it didn’t impact the on-site systems. Since the data was already being collected by the SCADA systems at the various locations, implementing a central SCADA and Historian in a DMZ allowed safer path to cloud. Moving the raw data to the cloud allowed for access from a variety of platforms, reducing data retrieval time without impacting the on-premises Historian system performance. For systems requiring real-time data views, leveraging Historian enabled near real-time data access without the need to access the OT systems directly.
Providing external data access without comprising security

Providing external data access without comprising security

Considerations for the implementation required a focus on providing external data access without comprising security. The Purdue model provided a reference structure for Industrial Control System (ICS) around segmenting the OT layer to protect it from threats. Implementing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) allowed for gathering data from the local system and moving the data securely to the Cloud. Once in the cloud, the various stakeholders were able to perform their own queries and retrieve the data they required.
They'll still have to go through ID checks and all that, but we're streamlining the way we get data to them in a matter of seconds – 5 to 15 seconds – so it's pretty close to real-time. We also aim to get the engineering firms on board with including this in their design - including Industrial Control Systems security requirements and needs.

They'll still have to go through ID checks and all that, but we're streamlining the way we get data to them in a matter of seconds – 5 to 15 seconds – so it's pretty close to real-time. We also aim to get the engineering firms on board with including this in their design - including Industrial Control Systems security requirements and needs.
Access to self-serve and performant data

Access to self-serve and performant data

This implementation ultimately provided the customers with self-serve and performant data access, while limiting the impact to Engineering and Operations. Leveraging the Cloud allowed for cost and time savings for IT as it reduced the management of the systems in the form of time and hardware costs. It also provides the flexibility of scaling as the volume of data grows – without requiring additional system management. Having the data easily available also allowed optimized chemical usage – saving up to 50% in some cases – visibility for management, accelerated vendor response times for project expansions and developments, and a base for future optimizations and analytics for alarm management, sensor monitoring, and beyond.

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