Case Story

A water utility company operating in the Kymenlaakso region.

Kymen Vesi trusts KeyAqua

Kymen Vesi produces high-quality drinking water for its customers reliably, safely and economically. The water supply plant also handles the treatment of wastewater in the region, upholding environmental values. Kymen Vesi’s water supply network covers approximately 800 km of water pipes and trunk lines and the same length of wastewater lines. The estimated number of residents in the properties connected to the network in the company’s operating area is 72,000, or roughly 95 % of the total population of the Kotka, Pyhtää and Anjalankoski region. In addition to its own network, Kymen Vesi operates with more than 20 local water cooperatives.

Background

The company’s own mapping team is responsible for mapping the entire water and wastewater network and maintaining and documenting the property information. “We use Keypro’s KeyAqua solution to maintain our network’s location and property information. In addition to our own network, we offer network mapping and documentation to local water cooperatives”, says Miikka Leinonen, Geographic Information System Engineer at Kymen Vesi. On the national level, Kymen Vesi is paving the way by helping and supporting water cooperatives in its region.

The challenge

Effortless access to network information is an important feature for Kymen Vesi. This means both internal operations and operations with stakeholders. “It is important to us that we can, if necessary, share our network location data with cities, other pipeline owners and contractors in our area of operation. We want to make sure that our own and our contractors’ operations do not endanger the pipelines of other pipeline owners. We expect the same from other pipeline owners. Only seamless information sharing makes this possible”, says Leinonen. With the KeyAqua system, Kymen Vesi is able to display the network information of a few other network owners operating in its area on the same map.

The solution and benefits

Maintaining network information and easy access to the information is a prerequisite for the smooth internal operations of the water supply plant. The shared KeyAqua system has proven particularly useful, given that Kymen Vesi was created as a result of the merger of the water supply plants in three municipalities. Now, all stakeholders of Kymen Vesi – the measurement department, the design department, the network unit, the installers, sales and management – can conveniently access the network information using their browsers. The mapping team also uses KeyAqua directly in the field. “All changes in the network can be updated almost in real time, and the information is immediately available to everyone. This makes things easier, for example, for the meter changer, who no longer needs to aimlessly search for the location of the valve, as he gets the information directly from the system”, says Leinonen.

So, how does Kymen Vesi use KeyAqua in its everyday operations? KeyAqua is a network location and feature management system. Kymen Vesi can easily separate the network elements for the water towers, pipelines, water treatment plants and individual pin-point targets. KeyAqua is able to conveniently illustrate the references, fittings and condition information related to these elements. In addition, the system has documentation on the areas of operation, water intake facilities and catchment areas. All of these can be illustrated on a background map or thematic maps. “Convenient thematic maps include the map of the pressure levels in the network and the thematic map of the pumping stations. We also use open data in our everyday operations, such as materials on groundwater areas as well as soil maps and flood risk zone maps.”

According to Leinonen, KeyAqua is much more than a location map: “We use KeyAqua to for network management, including fault monitoring, stormwater scanning and the planning of network renovations. As time goes on, KeyAqua will be used even more extensively.” In the future, there will be an increased need for data transfer to and from the system. “Online data transfer with a modelling system and API utilisation are topical features. API data transfer is currently being used to export data into the reporting system and collect key figures. This facilitates, for example, monthly monitoring and annual Veeti and Venla reporting. In the future, data transfer could be utilised even more extensively”, says Leinonen.

Read more about this case on our blog: KeyAqua in Kymen Vesi water utility

Company

Kymen Vesi

Industry

Water utility

Product

KeyAqua