Water is a hot commodity in Arizona, and the state is using a data management and analysis solution from Hitachi Vantara to better manage and allocate its water resources. As the Grand Canyon State faces ongoing drought and reduced water supply from the Colorado River, trusted data analysis has become a critical component in improving sustainability and addressing water supply challenges for the seven million residents of Arizona.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources collects, stores and analyzes usage data on nearly six trillion gallons of water each year, and it monitors ownership and types of water use from more than 330,000 distributed wells and surface water resources throughout the state. The department tracks geolocation coordinates, monitors depth and examines water uses to resolve issues with water rights. The department collected a lot of data but couldn’t properly organize it or effectively find relevant datasets for analysis.
A Catalog that Holds Water
The Arizona agency turned to Hitachi Vantara and rolled out the Pentaho Data Catalog, an AI-based metadata repository that can collect and classify data automatically. The Pentaho Data Catalog offers intelligent data discovery, classification, and visualization of relationships. Machine learning and automation enable the tool to recognize multiple structured data types, including geospatial information, personal information strings, court data, and historical records.
In the Arizona Department of Water Resources rollout, Pentaho’s machine learning algorithms sampled a vast collection of legacy records, while ensuring citizen records were secure. It generated accompanying metadata, which then was categorized by key lineage relationships. Data is presented in a centralized, integrated dashboard for simplified viewing and additional analysis as needed.
A Sea of Information
The Pentaho Data Catalog saves time for Arizona’s water resources managers and hydrologists, enabling quick searches, easy access to data and analytics, and comprehensive reporting. It searches through the state’s transactional databases, data warehouse, and document management system to provide a comprehensive report of the hundreds of references to a given search element. That provides a complete picture of the data and its history to better inform decision making and it frees staff to analyze and manage groundwater resources.
Hitachi Vantara’s solution provides the State of Arizona Department of Water with better visibility into its data and has allowed the state to modernize licensing and applications processes. It also enables the department to clarify terms and definitions for consistent structured analysis. Greater consistency translates to clearer understanding of water usage, and standardized processes and reporting for data collection in the field. Accessible and accurate data ensures accurate modeling, which allows Arizona to better manage its water resources today and for the future.
Find out more about the Pentaho Data Catalog.
Image Credit: Arizona Department of Water Resources