Project Description
Working towards a Cleaner and Greener Future - UnityWater DRIVE
Unitywater travels over 3.9 million kilometres each year maintaining water and wastewater services for our region. How might we use our vehicle data to benefit people, planet and productivity in the future? How might we improve our commitment to environmental sustainability, simplified work practices and people safety using vehicle data?
The Unitywater fleet travels over 3.9 million kilometres each year, transporting personnel, materials and equipment, vital to our work maintaining water and wastewater services to keep communities healthy across the Noosa, Sunshine Coast and Moreton Bay regions.
Unitywater delivers safe, reliable 24/7 water and wastewater services to those UNESCO Biosphere recognised regions in our service area. Our current operational model relies on vehicles, which have an impact on our effort to achieve net zero targets in a fast growing region.
Solution to the problem
Our vehicle management system maintains a rich and detailed set of data on our fleet movements, and we think there’s a great opportunity to better use this data to develop valuable insights to improve our operation to benefit people, planet, and productivity.
The intent of the WATERWISE UnityWater project is to optimise job planning based on scheduled and instant crew locations, employee residence location vs depot location, instantaneous route planning and employee incentives to actively reduce carbon emissions through job acceptance based on closest crew.
UNITYWATER JOB PLANNING OPTIMISATION FOR SCHEDULED AND PRIORITY WORK ORDERS:
Management software for the planning of scheduled work orders and optimisation of crew members based on their residential location vs depot location. Software incorporates route planning to best determine the optimal order of jobs to reduce travel distance, time and emissions.
Individual mobile application on crew mobile devices and crew work vehicles for on-the-fly acceptance of incoming un-scheduled priority repair and maintenance works and the visualisation of route updates for optimised vehicle efficiency.
QGIS HEAT MAPPING OF WORK ORDER LOCATIONS FOR REVIEW OF REQUIRED CAPITAL EXPENDITURE TO REDUCE ONGOING MAINTENANCE REQUIREMENTS REDUCING VEHICLE TRAVEL:
Used for referencing the location of UW telemetry and facilities data and import to QGIS to create heat maps of work locations. Other data sets used including code conversion of address to latitude and longitude for incorporation into the QGIS mapping. Mapping to advise management of critical work locations with multiple ongoing maintenance activities. Outputs utilised to schedule greater initial expenditure to reduce ongoing reactive maintenance activities.
ROUTE OPTIMISATION FOR VEHICLE EFFICIENCY:
Through the utilisation of management software and crew member applications on mobile devices and in the crew vehicles, scheduled work order planning is undertaken based on crew start and locations with a set radius of operations for each crew to reduce overlaps and reduce unnecessary duplication of travel routes.
Through the reduction of vehicle trips, automatic travel route on the fly updates accounting for vehicle type, route gradient, traffic congestion and vehicle speed via integration of the Google Maps Efficiency Routing API.
EMPLOYEE INCENTIVE SCHEME TO ACTIVELY REDUCE TRAVEL DISTANCE AND REDUCE EMISSIONS:
Through the use of the mobile application, employees choose jobs that align with their skills and availability, promoting a healthier work-life balance and greater job satisfaction.
The application provides comprehensive data and analytics on vehicle performance, emissions reduction, and operational efficiency, allowing us to continually enhance our practices.
Performance metrics showcase how we monitor vehicle efficiency, emissions reduction, and overall operational success, driving our continuous improvement efforts.
Employees are rewarded through the accumulation of 'droplets' via efficient driving behaviour, acceptance of work orders closest to their location and other measures. The allocation of droplets reduces exponentially with account of travel distance, CO2 emissions and driver behaviour.
Advances to the proposal
The mobile device applications can be further expanded to include instant vehicle outputs of driver efficiency (data set noted as being captured, however, not provided for use) and provide suggestions to change driver behavior for each individual vehicle and driver to reduce emissions, ie. reduction in level of acceleration or braking.
Incorporation of the paid Google Maps API for live route optimisation based on fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions including comparison between alternate routes for review and acceptance by the driver. Additional rewards points (droplets) allocated to the employee based on the acceptance of the most efficient route.
Data Story
UnityWater DRIVE utilises multiple datasets and can be expanded to incorporate further datasets and information when available to increase the optimisation of efficiencies through driver behaviour analytics, up to date route planning with Google Maps API.
UnityWater VMS Data Sets
The intent is to use the employee data set to confirm employee home location vs depot start and end location to ensure work crews are created with local employees to reduce vehicle travel distance and emissions. Emergency work orders to be pinged to employees local to the job location for availability and acceptance via the app interface on mobile devices and within each vehicle.
Extracted locations and converted them into longitude and latitude coordinates. To show on a QGIS map to create a heat map of critical work areas. This can be expanded to identify hot spot job locations to determine sites that may require greater maintenance expenditure in the short term to reduce long term maintenance activities, further reducing travel distance and emissions through the reduction of ongoing activities or condensing activities into a smaller work block.
The data set was merged with the vehicle identification data set to determine vehicle type (to be further expanded to include engine size, emissions output etc.). The merged data set was intended to create a user interface to select data based on vehicle ID and date and automatically filter the data set for individual vehicle mapping, emissions efficient route planning through Google Maps API.
Data set merged with the telemetry data to allow filtering of information by vehicle identification and date.
QLD Localities SHP GDA94
Used for referencing the location of UW telemetry and facilities data and import to QGIS to create heat maps of work locations. Other data sets used including code conversion of address to latitude and longitude for incorporation into the QGIS mapping. Mapping to advise management of critical work locations with multiple ongoing maintenance activities. Outputs utilised to schedule greater initial expenditure to reduce ongoing reactive maintenance activities.
