Lillestrøm municipality adopts digital smart city solution to remotely monitor hydro utilities, anchor broad sustainability effort

Water: A gift and a challenge for Lillestrøm

Ten minutes east of Oslo, Lillestrøm sits at the confluence of three rivers in the largest inland delta in Northern Europe, home to Lake Øyeren and the Øyeren nature reserve. Surrounded by forests, water, and a wealth of recreation opportunities, the municipality is understandably concerned about maintaining its natural assets, and providing a sustainable environment for the enjoyment of its 87,500 citizens. It falls to civil engineer Asgeir Hagen to help protect the waterways, manage wastewater, and keep the inhabitants—human and wildlife—safe from the effects of flooding.

The municipality had the infrastructure in place to manage water flows and related equipment. Teams would set out based on weather forecasts and emerging conditions to start and stop pumps, open gates, fix equipment, and gather information on current conditions. But the whole process was too reactive, and the information they had to work with was often too imprecise, too uncoordinated, and sometimes too late.

Asgeir and his colleague Erlend Berg, Enterprise Architect for Lillestrøm, realized that theirs was a data as much as it was a water problem. In the past, they engaged third-party organizations to provide environmental data for a waste management project. But they found that process costly, and the information they gathered had a limited useful lifetime and no broader application beyond that specific project. Erlend summarizes the problem and key features of their desired solution: “We would get a short period of data, which cost us a lot of money. Then after a while, we did the same exercise again.”

They needed a better way to collect and analyze more broadly useful data—a stream of current information that would provide a live picture of conditions throughout the region, and a flexible, adaptable means of sorting and analyzing that data to support actionable interpretations. Erlend continues, “What we needed was a continuous flow of real-time data that made it possible for us to see trends and predict upcoming events both for the purpose of taking actions as a municipality, and not least for informing or providing warnings for our citizens.”

The InfoTiles response

Attending the Nordic Edge smart city expo proved to be a game-changer for Asgeir and Erlend. There, they discovered the InfoTiles software as a service (SaaS) solution. Built on Microsoft Azure, InfoTiles aggregates real-time streamed data from Azure IoT sensors throughout complex monitoring networks, connects maintenance equipment, integrates control systems, and uses open-source connectors to collect and share data among previously siloed environments.

InfoTiles CEO Johnny Alexander Gunneng immediately recognized what Asgeir and Erlend were looking for; he created InfoTiles to solve problems exactly like theirs. He summarizes what he heard. “How can we provide clean water for less resources? How can we provide early warning of flooding? How can we ensure that our early response and emergency teams get the quickest routes during flood emergencies?” And just as important, for any solution to be effective and efficient, it must be usable. “You need to be able to sign in with your Microsoft account, see everything in one screen, one area. The solution needs to be simple on top, with the complex stuff underneath the hood. And it needs to be secure, accessible through single sign-on, and something that people can use in the field.”

Turning data into action

The new platform can ingest data from any source and readily add, remove, or configure other sources. Asgeir and Erlend incorporated a database to map and track key features in the Lillestrøm water and wastewater network—like water temperatures and flows, and the current status of some three million meters of pipe. It’s important for the municipality to maintain its existing infrastructure for the citizens. The municipality replaces 2 percent of pipes on average each year. By remotely monitoring and predicting which pipes or pumps need replacing, staff make more informed and proactive decisions before sending workers on site. This saves the department time and money by identifying the problem immediately and dispatching the right crews with the information they need. Fixing a single leak of 0.5 liters per second can prevent a recurring monthly loss in the range of $2,800, and the average water loss through pipe leaks in Norway is 30 to 40 percent, so the savings can be substantial.

They track other variables like air pollution, and they can even add data from traffic sensors to better understand the impact of flooding or other emergencies, and then feed that analysis back into traffic management. Asgeir says, “We’ve got ultrasound sensors to measure the height of the rivers. We have gas detectors. Temperature sensors on water pumps. We do air pollution measurements. We monitor 3 million meters of pipe. And it’s all fed back into InfoTiles for us to make calculations, focus effort for the greatest return, and take action.” Torbjørn Pedersen, Director of Digitalization, adds: “This project has created valuable insight through small, but smart investments. It provides justification for the IoT concept and shows how important digital competence is in all parts of the organization.”

With the new platform, they target engineering effort with greater accuracy, make smarter decisions on maintenance and repairs, and can better identify priorities. They’ve seen a real boost in the effectiveness and efficiency of their operations, and for the safety and well-being of the citizens of Lillestrøm.

The proactive interventions made possible by the platform save citizens time and money, too. As an example, rising waters that threaten to flood a bridge can make a major traffic artery impassable. The early warning from flow and level sensors upstream, combined with weather sensors and predictive traffic algorithms, enable workers to reroute with signage and adjust signaling, avoiding 45 minute return trips from closed roads that had plagued drivers and, most importantly emergency services, in the past.

Lillestrøm is a young, modern municipality that features a strong communications infrastructure, including Norway’s first 5G wireless network—which proved a big advantage in deploying and operating the new solution. The InfoTiles environment is largely technology- and network-agnostic, but 5G provides agility, helping support the widespread and rapid deployment of sensors and telemetry devices. Erlend offers as an example one of the most popular pages on the municipality’s website: river and lake bathing temperatures. He realized that the new environment could automate and improve that experience with up-to-the minute conditions, water, and temperature data: “Last spring, we onboarded nine sensors for measuring the temperature in the recreation areas with bathing facilities. We just pipe that data through the InfoTiles platform and present the information immediately on the citizen portal.”

Sharing information

That instant access to data is good for bathers, but it also pointed the municipality to a broader demand for easy access to a wealth of data for a wide range of users and scenarios. The municipality needed a single platform that featured powerful, adaptable interfaces that could help turn that raw data into focused, accessible, and actionable information. “We didn’t have to use one platform for the data, a second for visualization, and a third for making sense of it all. With the InfoTiles solution built on Azure, we have an end-to-end solution from IoT sensors to visualization; the act-on-fact principle is closer to us than ever before,” adds Erlend. And that same platform that collects and coordinates that data also helps free workers from their desks and act on facts more effectively and responsively, using mobile devices in the field.

In any such large-scale data operation, security is an issue, but Erlend was reassured that input from InfoTiles can be managed through his existing security policies and procedures: “A concern for us was the potential security risks of sending this data outside of our own servers. We were encouraged that access to all of this information within the InfoTiles solution is controlled by our own Azure Active Directory, which is completely within our control.”

Erlend is excited about the future, and the mutually beneficial potential in sharing data with other municipalities that adopt such systems. “I think this platform has a lot of great potential due to the underlying Microsoft Azure technology, along with the clever features InfoTiles has built into it. In Norway, we have a great tradition of sharing information and knowledge among all the municipalities.” Johnny knows that InfoTiles’ tight interoperation with Microsoft technologies brings benefits across the board, both from his point of view as the developer and for his customers who can better consume and share that information. “Our solution works seamlessly with the Microsoft stack. So, for instance, when they log on, they use their Microsoft account. When they want to share information, they use Microsoft Teams. They use Azure IoT to gather data, and Power BI to visualize it and share with other departments at Lillestrøm, and also to support citizens in other municipalities. And we host everything on Azure, so it’s 100 percent Microsoft.”

Contributing to a sustainable future

Lillestrøm’s primary commitment is to its citizens and their living environment. But in the process of solving local problems with its new platform, it can now make an exemplary contribution to the United Nations Sustainable City program (U4SSC). This initiative measures sustainability efforts around the globe to help fulfil a mission to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” Lillestrøm feeds real, live data into the program, comparing the municipality’s performance against other regions and cities throughout the world. The partnership with InfoTiles helps the municipality answer the program’s call to contribute its data and experience for global benefit.

Find more information on the municipality of Lillestrøm. Read more about how InfoTiles improves cities and services.