Tuesday, November 14, 2023

2:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Breakout Room A, Rongomatane A

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Overview

Presented by Sandrine Le Gars and Preston Ferreira, Northland Regional Council, Te Kaunihera ā rohe o Te Taitokerau

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Details

How do we streamline the processing of environmental data to meet the growing future needs head-on? Through innovation and automation. The Resource Management Act of 1991 mandates regional councils to collect, process, and store environmental data to facilitate data-driven decisions and effective water resource management. Given the growing emphasis on climate change, the accurate monitoring and management of Aotearoa's limited water resources have become paramount. However, the manual processing of real-time data from hundreds of sensors leads to significant delays in obtaining trustworthy information. This often leads to up-to a 15-month backlog of unprocessed data. Continuous real-time data is collected in a raw format from on-site sensors, which requires extensive editing due to data spikes, flatlines, noise, gaps, etc. As data collection technology advances, this problem is expected to worsen with the exponential increase in data volumes. Recognising the need for a quicker data processing solution to maintain a clear picture of water resources, NRC sought a digital solution that could be implemented quickly to help alleviate the current processing constraints, whilst maximising learning for the future benefit and re-use across the regional sector. To make an informed decision regarding the digital solution build, NRC commissioned a supplier to help manage the project in separate phases with stage-gates. The solution proposed by Orbica met NRC's criteria, leveraging AI to enhance business efficiency, democratise data, and foster innovation in this unique challenge. Initially focusing on automating water level data processing (5.5 million data points collected annually across 80 sites), NRC's project evolved to be capable of automating the handling and cleaning of all continuous environmental data (e.g., water quality, groundwater, etc.) using standardised methodologies. The project adheres to the National Environmental Monitoring Standards (NEMS) for consistency across the sector. This groundbreaking project has garnered sector-wide interest due to its aim to address common issues such as organisational and individual data inconsistencies, resource-intensive processes, and the expanding data network. Through streamlined automation, NRC can promptly provide quality assured information to stakeholders while preparing for the challenges posed by increasing data volumes and community expectations.

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Speaker