Tag Archive for: Water Quality

Using Prophet Modeling to look for Outliers in Groundwater Level Data

At Locus, we are constantly exploring innovative ways to visualize and analyze large datasets, empowering users to derive insights with ease.

Todd Pierce on GIS Day 2024

The GIS visualization shows how the chlorine levels near our product manager’s home have normalized over the past 6 weeks.

Locus staff members in North Carolina provide insights into Hurricane Helene and environmental data

Todd Pierce documents his parallel insights as an Asheville resident directly impacted and as an environmental information management expert.

Tackling the Water Crisis: Locus Software for Water Sustainability

Explore how innovative technologies like Locus Water software-as-a-service (SaaS) can play a pivotal role in addressing the water crisis and promoting water sustainability.

Better consumer complaint tracking for water utilities

5 Red Flags of Outdated Software

Finding the Best Environmental Sampling Tool

There is a need for most water entities to centralize data, and more easily load, share, analyze, and report data. Locus Technologies’ customizable software makes scheduling and collecting routine water samples is made easy by using Locus Mobile and EIM. Below is a list of frequent challenges that customers have encountered during their water sampling process and how they can be solved using the right tools from Locus. or better communications. 

Challenge 1: Finding a flexible sampling planning tool 

Planning tools need to allow flexibility in terms of different sampling intervals and date ranges, different field and analytical parameters, and account for location grouping. Using a well-designed application can pull together all of this detailed information and can provide a summary view of the individual samples. A manager can easily view sample status, and whether the sample is complete, in process, or planned.  A well-designed application can also generate the chain of custody (COC), and lab and sample shipping date information and labels per sample, which is a huge time saver. This type of sample tracking detail seemed to be very useful to many conference attendees to help ensure they are in regulatory compliance with required sampling frequencies. A key feature to look for is an application that is flexible enough that it can allow one-time, unplanned sample events such as water main breaks, customer complaints and schedule changes, and can handle complex multi-year routine sampling with ease. As a plus, it’s easy for you or your manager to know where you stand at any time. 

LocusPlatform_Water_Sampling

Challenge 2: Eliminating data entry errors caused by hand data entry 

Data entry errors and fixing bad data when it was transcribed from field notes to Excel or other programs is a persistent problem with the old way of doing things.  Your company needs a better way to streamline the error prone data collection process.  Many clients are interested in an alternative to the pencil/paper/clipboard method and had goals to move to tablet or smartphone for data collection.  The universal wish list for mobile field applications included: 

  • Easy to use and set up 
  • Built in data validation to catch data entry errors at the source 
  • Direct upload to a data system so the end of the day all the daily samples were in the system with the push of a button 
  • Prepopulating locations especially for large water systems 
  • Complete field instructions for samplers on what to collect and where to collect it to eliminate missed samples 
  • Smart tracking to know on a daily/weekly basis, what samples were collected and what samples were still outstanding 
  • Integrated with sample planning tools (See challenge 1) to automate the sampling instructions and track the data collection activities vs plan 

Locus-Mobile-Water-Sampling

Challenge 3: Getting the most out of their software, especially regarding updates 

Everyone is aware that software updates all the time.  Sometimes its security enhancements and sometime feature enhancements or bug fixes.  A source of frustration is getting a software update and not knowing what was updated or how best to incorporate a new feature/enhancement into their established process.  There was also concern for impact to an established routine with field crews that were used to the existing way of doing things. Even if a functionality improved the workflow, enhancements are only valuable to a user if they understand how to use them and how to incorporate them into their existing process. 

Some suggestions from the attendees included:
  • Concurrent documentation updates with software updates 
  • “Quick start” guides for new functionality 
  • Online training on the new functionality with recording for later viewing 
  • Heads up on what is coming in the next several months so they can do strategic planning (sharing the roadmap) 
  • Sandbox environment to test the enhancements before going in production so they can plan how to incorporate the features into their process and train field crews 

Mobile applications, which appear very simple to the users, are in reality complex software and require careful integration with the receiving database for a range of complex use cases.  This makes rolling out new mobile features challenging for both the developers and the users.  Enhanced customer/developer communication along with a sandbox environment can go a long way towards solving some of the inherent issues with rapid innovations and updates associated with cloud and mobile software. 

Locus-Technologies-Training-and-Support

Software tools are available and can solve a lot of the common data management challenges, but know what you want, know the problem you are trying to solve and know it will take some time and effort, but the end result will significantly improve your business processes. Though these challenges are present when choosing a software, Locus Technologies has the experts to help you hurdle the challenges to find the solution that is best for your business. 

 

Simplify Your Water Tracking with Locus Platform

Tracking your data is made easy within our software as a service (SaaS), Locus Platform (LP). Your company can take advantage of LP’s mobile-aware browser functions, giving you the capability to do all your fieldwork with your existing phones or tablets.   When cellular connections are unavailable or unreliable, Locus also has a Mobile app which supports the offline capabilities you need to keep your workflow going. 

Regardless of your mobile approach, each mobile form can be easily configured to capture the data you require in the field such as photos and the sampling results.  

Along with easy mobile data collection, Locus Platform can help you to:
  • Track and report your daily results, such as chlorine, nitrite and temperature to water treatment operators, for real time adjustments.
  • Monitor lab results from routine sampling. 
  • Flag out of range data in real time for notifications or data entry corrections. 
  • Analyze data geospatially to understand situations impacting water quality. 
  • Report average monthly chlorine results. 
  • Track water quality complaints and illicit discharges overtime.  
  • Generate Nitrification Reports.  
  • Prepare Monthly Flushing reports. 
Of course, those are not the limits of Locus Platform. Our software can also help you to: 
  • Track and manage all types of tasks and regulatory commitments. 
  • Track any type of permit and associated requirements. 
  • Generate notifications for defined events, such as data entered above limits. 
  • Produce PDF and Excel reports for regulators and customers. 
  • Keep all your information in an easy-to-use secure system and basically future proof your program. 

Whether in the office, or out in the field, Locus Technologies is with you every step of the way during the tracking process. Contact us to find your solution. 

 

Locus Innovations in 2022

2022 has given us a wealth of new features and growth! Both of our platforms have undergone improvements to enhance our client’s user experience. Let’s look at all the new features for 2022.

Environmental Information Management (EIM)

 

1. New Site Metrics dashboard allows immediate visibility into your data with clickable mapping. This is especially powerful for customers with multiple sites where they want to keep track of site activity and usage. 

2. Finding data can sometimes be overwhelming especially when you have hundreds, if not thousands, of locations and numerous analytical parameters to review. Locus added advanced database search tools to support multiple search terms and ‘exact match’ searches, making it easy to find exactly what you want with a couple of key words and a click. Never has finding the right results from large complex datasets been so easy. 

3. Locus has enhanced its API functionality to enable easier integration with external BI tools, including Tableau, PowerBI, and other apps. Now, customers that rely on external business analytical tools will have quick and easy access to data to combine with other internal data sources.

4. Locus document management has been taken to the next level by allowing customers to link documents from any external library directly into their sites, monitoring locations, samples, and more.  This means with a simple click, users can go to lab reports, regulatory reports, and any other current or historical document associated with the site.  If you are using SharePoint, for example, to manage documents – they can be accessed directly from Locus software.  Document access and security will be preserved by existing document library access controls.

5. 2022 was the year of “help”.  In addition to the advanced search, Locus added a new Help Browser to provide access to comprehensive documentation for every feature of the software.  It is similar to the familiar site map, only the links take you to help content.  With this new feature, users can view help in a single location vs having to access the information on each individual screen.  For new users, or infrequent users, this will be their new favorite feature. 

EHS & ESG Solutions

1. Locus’ Survey/Questionnaire tool enables you to securely & easily obtain data globally without the burdens of training or maintaining user lists. The survey system effortlessly supports data entry from external organizations (such as suppliers) or even occasional users internal to your organization, with a simple link click.

2. Locus released a new pivot table tool that enables you to perform full data analysis on any query in the system.  Data may be grouped and organized by any value. Output options include bar charts, heatmaps, tables, area charts, scatter charts, and tree maps. In support of the output options, Locus has improved the ability for users to create dashboards more easily.

3. Complex inspection and audit forms require branching, sophisticated, scoring, and automated responses.  Locus added new question types to its inspection/ audit module, including conditional questions based on responses to one or more previous questions. Locus augmented the scoring calculation mechanism and automated creation and tracking of corrective action.

4. In today’s world, users need access to environmental data on the go.  Locus augmented its mobile offerings to include configurable layouts for mobile users, with compact forms specially designed for smartphone and tablet access.  

5. Today’s managers want immediate access to the data they need. Locus new Landing Page feature makes it simple to configure the dashboards, bookmarks, and record lists. This enables the user to review just the areas they need to see and navigate efficiently to complete the work. 

 

5 Major Signs That You Need to Replace Your Water Data Management Solution

In providing a water data management solution to organizations serving millions of customers a day, our experts have found some common red flags in alternative solutions. Many alternatives to Locus software are more prohibitive than helpful, leading to more issues than they should. Your organization deserves to reduce the stress of data entry, regulatory and voluntary reporting, and more. Here are the top 5 signs that your organization is using outdated water data software:

1. You’re transcribing data more than once or still using paper forms.

In order to ensure the highest level of data quality, you should not be risking human error at multiple levels. Enter your data once, and have it audit-ready, set to go on regulatory and voluntary reports, which are created directly from Locus software.

2. Product support is not led by specialists who support you adequately after implementation.

Support doesn’t end after implementation. What we often hear from our customers when they switch from other providers is that they are delighted with the level of support that Locus brings with our software. Locus is proud to have the expertise and experience to back our water data management solution, and if there is anything you need, you can be sure that Locus support can get it done smoothly.

3. Your software has regular or unexpected downtimes.

You need reliability. Your software should be available to you on-demand. Locus is proud to be the only environmental software developer to publicly share our uptime, which is over 99.9%. If you are experiencing downtimes at inconvenient times or for long periods, you should switch to Locus.

4. Your water data management solution is not mobile enabled.

Field collection is key for most organizations managing water quality data. You should be able to enter that data into your system once, and from anywhere, reducing errors and extra time doing the same work twice (or more!). Also, being able to access historical data at your fingertips can help you solve problems on the fly.

5. The water data management solution doesn’t provide actionable insights.

Sure, you may have all of your data collected, but what are you doing with it? If your software is not giving you meaningful findings from analyzing your data, then you are always going to be playing catch-up. Having the tools to help your organization look forward is essential in selecting the right water data management solution.

water data management solution

Tag Archive for: Water Quality

Nothing Found

Sorry, no posts matched your criteria