An alarm is only as good as the reading behind it

Instruments fail in ways that a range check cannot detect. A velocity probe that has ceased to register movement reports zero, which is a legitimate value in a pipe under low flow. A depth transducer subject to drift of a few millimetres per week produces a series that stays inside its calibrated range for months before the error becomes large enough to notice. In a paired installation, one instrument may stop returning data while the other continues, leaving a record that appears complete. In each case the reported value falls within the range the instrument is expected to produce, so nothing in the data stream itself separates the faulty reading from a sound one.

A threshold alarm applied to that data will fire on the instrument fault rather than on the network condition it was configured to detect. The cost is twofold. A crew is dispatched to a location where nothing is wrong, and the next alarm from that site is treated with a little less urgency. Repeated often enough, the alarm is muted and the site stops being monitored in any meaningful sense.

infinitii flowworks therefore treats the integrity of a reading as a question separate from the condition of the network, and evaluates it continuously. Anomaly detection establishes how each channel normally behaves and identifies drift, flatlines and dropouts that remain within the valid range. Corrections are written to the edit history and stay visible alongside the corrected series, so a reviewer can establish what was changed and when. Where a hydraulic model runs against live data, a sustained divergence between predicted and observed values under conditions in which the two should agree is itself evidence that the instrument requires inspection.

Alarming operates on that basis. Alerts are delivered to the staff on duty by web, email, SMS or voice, subject to a dwell time so that a transient excursion does not generate a notification. Where the integrity checks indicate a fault in the instrument rather than a change in the network, that finding gates the alarm: the exception is presented as an instrument problem to be investigated, rather than as a network event requiring a crew.

Find your work

Each focus area gets specific about the work it covers rather than describing the platform in general.

Water

Distribution pressure, pressure reducing valve (PRV) performance, reservoir levels and water quality across systems from a handful of sites to several thousand.

Wastewater

Collection systems, overflow monitoring and inflow and infiltration (I&I) analysis — including the dry weather flow work and the storm identification and classification that studies are built on.

Rainfall

Rain gauge networks, intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves, return-period analysis and ingestion of third-party gauge-adjusted radar rainfall.

Streamflow

Hydrometric networks, stage-discharge rating curves and flood stage alarming, from one creek to a full gauging programme.

Climate

Temperature, humidity, wind, solar radiation and snow — alongside the rainfall and flow data they explain.

Facilities

Pump stations, treatment plants and PRV stations: run hours, duty balance, chlorination compliance and failure notification.

Industrial

Process and discharge monitoring for sites with regulatory reporting duties, including locations without conventional telemetry.

Browse by capability

If you already know what you need — alarming, I&I analysis, dashboards, calculated channels — start from the feature groups instead.

Sensors and loggers from many manufacturers feeding one platform
Who pays and who introduces us

Two ways in

Utilities own the system and hold the subscription. But infinitii flowworks is very often introduced by an engineering consultancy or an equipment manufacturer meeting a software requirement in a bid — and the relationship usually outlives that firm's contract.

If you are bidding or specifying rather than operating, what follows is written for you.

  • Engineering firms — deliver analysis that keeps running after the project closes
  • Equipment manufacturers — let customers do more with the data your devices produce
  • Anyone writing an RFP — what infinitii flowworks satisfies in a software requirement
Ready to begin?

Start with your own data

That is usually the fastest way to tell whether infinitii flowworks is the right fit for the work.