Water Board Aa and Maas

Data warehouse with measurement data in Azure

Water Board Aa and Maas stands for safe, sufficient water. To do its job well, the board needs a lot of management information, preferably in real time. What is the quality of the surface water? Where is there too much water or too little? What is the state of wastewater treatment? What are the groundwater levels? To answer these questions, a data warehouse was needed. Valid helped to build it.

"Digital transformation is also a major theme at our company. Everyone is innovating business processes. Like us, many water boards have created data labs to investigate how data can add value to our primary processes: ensuring clean and safe water." So says Fred van Bemmel, information analyst and project leader at Waterschap Aa en Maas.

Challenge: transition to the cloud

With the desired digitization, data warehousing in the cloud came into the picture. An attractive and viable option, since it is no longer necessary to set up and maintain an infrastructure yourself. Moreover, the cloud provider offers numerous ready-to-use tools and functions. Valid was asked for advice, guidance and implementation because, according to Van Bemmel, this service provider is a leader in leading data management in the cloud. On Valid's advice, Microsoft Azure was chosen. The water board has large amounts of data: millions of measurements of water levels and quality, among other things. Originating from locks, dams or sewage treatment plants. Generated in real-time by IoT applications, or measured manually in the field. Aa en Maas wanted to use that data not only to look back, but also forward.

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Waterschap-Aa-en-Maas
Solution: Agile partnership based on Azure

The in-house data lab and IT management conducted a pilot with Valid. This showed that cloud data warehousing was quite feasible. Aa en Maas chose the agile approach for the actual implementation of the data warehouse. Taking small steps makes risks manageable and allows you to make adjustments along the way. "It gives the organization room to grow along with the solution. Learning and doing go hand in hand," says Van Bemmel.

Benefit of collaboration: complementary expertise

Van Bemmel is pleased with Valid's good support. "You need a lot of technical and informational knowledge for this kind of innovation. We don't need to have that in-house. It is sufficient if we understand what is happening and if we know how to keep the system up and running. Valid provides the additional expertise." Aa and Maas itself manages the infrastructure: the size of the data warehouse, the folder structure, access rights. Valid takes care of filling the data lake and the data warehouse. Power BI provides beautiful dashboards with graphical representation of the data.

"Valid put together a good plan. They were able to strike the right tone, gaining confidence. What I further appreciate is the flexibility."

Fred van Bemmel Information analyst and project leader at Water Board Aa and Maas
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The result: better services

"Innovation is the spearhead. We put a lot of time and energy into improving our services and business processes. For example, in the area of disaster prevention, due to extreme weather. By properly analyzing data sets you can anticipate possible rain damage or, on the contrary, dehydration. We also optimize mowing policy. A mowed watercourse drains optimally, but every mowing costs money. So we are looking at the possibility of dividing mowing sessions in time better and sometimes even skipping them. Mowing can be planned but you need data for that too."

The Water Board's innovative approach has not gone unnoticed. It already earned Aa and Maas the title Best Government Organization of the Year. In part because of its innovation in providing services to resident citizens and businesses.

Future: leveraging more data more broadly

Aa and Maas and Valid have laid the foundation for further expansion of information services. With both internal data from other applications and data from external sources such as KNMI weather data. The new data infrastructure enables the Datalab to do a lot of experimenting, including in the field of artificial intelligence. "The data warehouse is just the beginning," he says.

Water Board Aa and Maas
  • Management area: 161,000 ha
  • Population: 778,000
  • Number of municipalities: 20
  • Number of employees: about 500
  • 9,000 measurement sites
Results
  • Basis for data-driven processes is laid
  • Data integration of separate source systems is now possible
  • Visualize correlations between the quality and quantity of measurement data
  • Reporting with Power BI easy and consistent
  • Manual cutting and pasting in Excel is no longer necessary
Added value Valid
  • Thinking ahead
  • Plan of action instead of quotation
  • Added value in design and implementation
  • Knowledge of business
  • Result-oriented
  • Structured yet flexible approach
  • Teamwork