Practical Tips For Improving Sewer Data Management

Legacy data provides wastewater professionals the opportunity to review the history of defects for a given section, monitor rates of deterioration, and make more informed decisions on when and how to repair infrastructure. However, the condition of legacy data makes a significant difference in the value that it provides to municipalities. In particular, data security, accessibility and quality are all crucial to successfully managing wastewater infrastructure and sustaining data hygiene.

Data hygiene is the ongoing practice of maintaining healthy data, or data that is ready for use and free of major errors. It most commonly takes place in the form of quality checks during or immediately after data entry, or when data is transferred from one platform to another. Being mindful of data hygiene yields more completeness, conformity, consistency, and accuracy in the database. For many municipalities, data hygiene is essential to the efficacy and, more importantly, the security of sensitive wastewater data.