It’s impossible to ignore the impact that AI is having on utility management and the wastewater industry. Municipalities and contractors that have gotten their hands on the technology are already seeing returns, and while adoption may be gradual, forward-thinking decision-makers are educating themselves and their teams about where AI could fit into operation and maintenance workflows.
Balancing the bandwidth of essential utilities can be like walking a tightrope. Employee salaries, equipment costs and a variety of operational expenses are just a few of the bandwidth constraints municipalities face. To mitigate these constraints, water utilities are turning to digital, cloud-based solutions that not only help cut down time per inspection but also eliminate various manual tasks. With the help of AI and integrated technology, utilities can do more with the employee bandwidth and equipment they already have.
When Sewermatics hit the market in 2021, it changed the way inspection teams thought about condition assessment and coding. Suddenly, utilities could offload thousands of inspections for processing through WinCan’s AI engine, and results started turning major workflow backlogs into safely stored, ready-to-use sewer data. Entering 2023, Sewermatics AI scanning has come to WinCan’s cloud environment to deliver a sewer inspection experience that both expedites workflows and alleviates workloads.
There are lots of opportunities for important sewer data to fall through the cracks in the journey from collection to analysis. If data is stored, transferred and shared in physical formats such as paper, it is at greater risk of loss than data stored in secure, digital environments. Digital data storage offers much more reliable containers for sewer data than physical methods. Not to mention, inspection software with NASSCO-certified coding modules helps ensure outgoing data aligns with the proper condition assessment standard. These and other factors can impact the accuracy, completeness and usability of your data.
Innovation in the wastewater industry is thriving. Sewer teams have begun to adopt technologies like AI and HD video capture to propel everyday workflows. Federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is enabling utilities across the country to address aging infrastructure. And sewer inspection teams of every size are transitioning to cloud-based data solutions that keep them connected and tracking projects more efficiently. The infrastructure world is changing fast, and 2023 is setting the stage for shifts in technology and workflow efficiency.
Since its launch, Sewermatics has set the standard for innovative applications of AI in the wastewater industry. Accurate, organized data is essential to sewer maintenance, and WinCan has combined digital workflows with cloud-based integrations to ensure data is always where it needs to be. Sewermatics takes that data a step further, processing and coding inspection media with unrivaled speed and efficiency.
When AIMS companies set out in 2007 to build a turnkey operation providing municipal and industrial inspection and cleaning services, they had no idea just how much sewer data their hard work would create. Today, they operate out of 17 locations across the United States and provide a wide range of municipal wastewater services. Among their most popular offerings is manhole inspection, which has seen increased demand in recent years. As a result, project completion rates increased and datasets began to swell.
Artificial intelligence is only as good as the people who create it. This is true not only for the algorithm, but the inspection data that helps train it.
WinCan’s Sewermatics data services are making it easier for municipalities to overcome bottlenecks and workload spikes. Tools like data translation and visualization have long-term effects on inspection analysis and planning, and AI-supported defect coding keeps projects on pace and within budget. Backed by WinCan Web’s cloud infrastructure, Sewermatics can easily help inspection teams deliver results faster, directly to WinCan Web for access from anywhere in the world.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has entered the sewer market in a big way. Not only is it expediting sewer inspection workflows, it’s providing an avenue for data to be organized, analyzed and updated automatically. The rippling effects of AI-powered defect coding alone are quickly changing the way municipalities approach sewer maintenance and asset management. And with ROI often top of mind for most municipal sewer teams, WinCan’s Sewermatics is already delivering positive results for AI defect coding projects.
