Big Data Focus at 2013 ISA Water/Wastewater Symposium

This guest post is authored by Graham Nasby, general symposium chair of the 2013 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium.

Big Data is Big News in just about every corner of our digitally connected world.  Leveraging massive amounts of process data archives is a game changer for practically any industrial process, enabling greater levels of agility, efficiency and competitiveness.  This year’s 2013 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium will deliver the most current information on Big Data with a keynote presentation by Carey E. Hidaka of IBM Software Group.  Carey’s speech, “Using Data from Municipal Water/Wastewater SCADA Systems (and Other Sources) to Make Smarter Operational, Maintenance, and Infrastructure Investment Decisions” focuses on how Big Data approaches to plant optimization can reap real rewards.

The ISA water/wastewater symposium, to be held 6-8 August in Orlando, Fla., also will showcase “smart water,” or the intelligent application of application automation technology to municipal water and wastewater plants.  The modern municipal water treatment plant now includes a sophisticated automated control system, carefully designed operator interfaces and advanced data analytics for process automation.  All of this infrastructure must be designed, built, operated and maintained by a highly skilled workforce.  The ISA symposium serves as an ideal venue for professionals from operations, maintenance, design and integration to share ideas, network and learn about new technologies.

In addition to the Big Data keynote, the 2013 ISA water/wastewater symposium also features  37 technical speakers, three invited speakers and guest speakers from the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the Florida Section of the American Water Works Association (AWWA).

Other notable symposium presentations include:

• Smart Water Networks for Operational Efficiency Gains
  - Brian Heimbigner and Mark Bitto, ABB
• Risks of Smart Water Applications – Rigorous Risk Assessment of the Adoption of Smart Water Applications
  - Andreas Hauser, Thomas Stoertkuhl, Klaus Estenfeld amd E. Earl Eiland -TÜV SÜD AG
• Using Procedural Automation to Improve Operational Efficiency with ISA106
  - Marcus Tennant and Leila Myers, Yokogawa
• SCADA Control and Monitoring Of Groundwater Remediation Facilities: Past, Present And Planning For The Future
  - Obadiah Kilonzo and Kevin Flemming, Carolina Automation Systems
• Simulate Your Way out of a Difficult Real Time Control Problem: Automatically Controlling Gates to Reduce Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs)
  - Maxym Lachance,TetraTech and Sid Lodewyk, City of Edmonton (Alberta, Canada)

About the Author
Graham Nasby, PE, PMP is the general symposium chair of the 2013 ISA Water/Wastewater and Automatic Controls Symposium, which is being held 6-8 August in Orlando, Fla. at the Crowne Plaza Orlando-Universal Hotel.  Nasby is a senior member of the ISA and a voting member of the ISA18 alarm management standards committee.  He works as a senior instrumentation & control engineer with Eramosa Engineering Inc. Contact: graham.nasby@eramosa.com.