The saying “timing is everything” certainly applies to the City of Atlanta’s efforts to prevent flooding by making a retention pond at a local park more efficient.

City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management manager Bill Douty was in the planning process to reconfigure the pond at Dean Rusk Park when he heard Marcus Quiqley, founder and CEO of Microsoft partner Opti, speak at a November 2017 meeting of the Georgia Association of Water Professionals. When he learned about the Microsoft Azure-powered platform that increases retention capacity, prevents flooding and reduces costs, Douty knew he had the solution for a significant stormwater management problem. “I went, ‘Holy mackerel, this is the answer in the back of the book—this is just what we’ve been looking for,’” he said.

Using Azure to deal with Mother Nature’s clouds

Douty, who says his “primary job is to reduce flooding in the city of Atlanta,” has been designing and fixing retention ponds since the ‘70s, but there’s always been a key challenge: “The way we design retention ponds is we calculate the orifice and the overflow and then we build it out of concrete, so it’s a static system. The storms are always unique; the storms don’t play by the book—Mother Nature rains anyway she wants to.” When that happens, Quigley said Douty is “the guy who gets called in the middle of the night if the city is flooding,” adding “he was immediately aware of the potential of the Opti and Azure technology and jumped on it.”

Microsoft’s cloud, Opti algorithms, and field-deployed devices address the limitations of a static system by using weather forecasts to monitor and directly control stormwater infrastructure in real time. The result: an intelligent system that can adapt to changing weather patterns and proactively respond before severe storms hit, with the ability to lower water levels to prevent flooding. “It was great news for stormwater management, and, to me, it was an advance in technology,” Douty said. “I’ve worked on a lot of retention ponds in several different states and I’ve always said, ‘you know, if I had a raincoat and a valve, I could control it.’ I could just sit up there in a rainstorm and look at the stream and look at the lake—but it’s not practical. And that’s what this system does, it watches the weather, it watches the pond,” to regulate flow and prevent flooding.

Innovation that’s economical

A request from a city council member prompted Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management to add the pond at Dean Rusk Park to its list of projects, Douty explained. “The commissioner and the assistant commissioner and my deputy commissioner had told all of us engineers that, to solve the city’s problems, we’ve got to be innovative,” he said. Recognizing the Opti-Azure system as an innovation and, with Dean Rusk Park in the planning process, “it was perfect timing for me.”

While full implementation won’t occur until later this year, initial Opti equipment has been in place since August, allowing the City and the project’s lead engineering firm, Hazen and Sawyer, to monitor close to 100,000 data points and analyze the pond during storms, including Hurricane Michael. “We see the benefits of managing our stormwater and, if we had more of these systems…it would definitely be a better way to manage the capacity in the pipes,” Douty said. “Everybody that’s working with me is really excited about it; we think it’s a great tool.”

In addition to making the retention pond more efficient and avoiding flooding, Douty sees other benefits. “One of the things we looked at was the cost; it’s not cost-prohibitive,” he said, adding that the Opti platform is “certainly more economical” than building new retention ponds. “We don’t have the resources to go in and rebuild the infrastructure from the ground up…so we’ve got to look at ways to control the storm runoff and this actually is a very good way to do it.”

A novel idea

Douty’s long-term expertise and experience in stormwater management lends credibility to his calling the Opti-Azure platform “a novel idea,” ranking it with other stormwater and technology advances, such as PVC pipe, geotechnical fabric, the internet and computer-aided design. “It’s a completely different and better way to look at solving stormwater problems,” he said. “It allows you to work with the existing infrastructure you’ve got … It’s like taking a vehicle and putting a much better, more efficient engine in it. I can make my existing infrastructure more efficient by just adding this technology.”

Learn more

Microsoft CityNext is proud to partner with Opti to prevent flooding in Atlanta and other cities. Please learn how our cloud is enabling Opti to support U.S. communities, including Albany, N.Y., Anne Arundel County, Md., Kansas City, Mo., and more, and find additional great resources about cities using our cloud, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things solutions.

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Awards season in Hollywood may be over but county governments can still look forward to the prestigious National Association of Counties (NACo) Achievement Awards, which have been recognizing innovative county government programs for the past 48 years. Maryland’s Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) was a NACo honoree last year for collaborating with Microsoft CityNext partner EastBanc Technologies to launch SNOWiQ. This Microsoft Azure-powered solution provides real-time management and monitoring of snow removal efforts to keep residents informed when roads are cleared and safe for travel, while increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs.

January 2016: over 4 feet of snow

Reza Zarif, information technology specialist for Montgomery County, pointed to a significant January 2016 storm resulting in over 4 feet of snow as the catalyst for pursuing a more robust way of keeping the public informed during a snow event, and better managing operations. “The snow removal process, when you have that much snow, is going to be pretty slow,” he explained. “County residents are not able to get out of their homes, they (need) more data and information in terms of how soon their neighborhood streets are going to be cleared.” At the time, Montgomery County was using a mapping tool that was ill-equipped to provide up-to-date information. “There would be a lot of lag time between information flowing from our truck drivers to our depot staff to our storm-operations center … and then on to county residents,” he said. “That delay brought a lot of frustration.”

Another challenge was the inability to gain efficiencies and improve communication in what was primarily a paper- and radio-based operation. Zarif explained that Montgomery County employs about 220 plow-truck drivers, augmenting its staff by hundreds of contractors during severe storms. “That poses a whole set of challenges of its own” since contract drivers are not equipped with radios on the same frequency as county staff.

March 2016: developing a modern solution

In March 2016, Zarif’s Information Technology organization in the Department of Transportation in cooperation with Montgomery County’s Department of Technology Services, were tasked with developing a modern solution for snow removal. Having previously worked with Montgomery County to implement the TRANSITiQ public transportation tool, Peter Shashkin of EastBanc Technologies came onboard. According to Zarif, Montgomery County was clear on its preference for Google Maps and two other requirements:

• “A very scalable platform and (cloud) architecture that could handle large volumes of data and public inquiries during major events” and the increased data flowing between snowplow drivers in the field and operations staff.
• “We wanted the system to work using mobile devices—either tablets or phones” to avoid installing special equipment in snowplow trucks and enable direct communication with drivers about their locations and assignments.

Azure advantages

An Azure cloud-based architecture offered many advantages for what would become SNOWiQ. “There were many facets of Azure that made it an attractive choice for us,” Zarif said. “We really wanted to have a system that was built on cloud services to be able to withstand the volume of data.”

For Shashkin and EastBanc Technologies, the trusted Azure cloud provided other benefits: “As a custom software development company, we needed a cloud solution that allows us to quickly react to requests from our customers without unnecessary overhead of datacenter and system administration. Azure, being a leader in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) technology, provides everything we need to accomplish this goal.”

Award-winning outcome

After documenting customer requirements, EastBanc Tech began developing SNOWiQ in August 2016 and had an initial system deployed in one of Montgomery County’s five depots to assess performance and gain feedback from the field. “Overall, the product has been received extremely well by our drivers, by our supervisory staff and even by our contracted drivers,” Zarif said. “We’re able to provide the makeup of the route that they need to travel to treat the roadways using a mobile device and that’s been a huge benefit. Previous to that, they were using paper maps or just institutional knowledge.

“With SNOWiQ, it doesn’t matter whether (the drivers) have done it a hundred times or if this is their first time—they know exactly where they need to go and what to do,” Zarif continued. “It has evolved our snow-removal operations to the point that I don’t think (we) would … go back to the way it was before.”

From March to December 2017, Montgomery County worked with EastBanc Technologies to refine SNOWiQ into today’s mature, award-winning system that is implemented in all five county depots. While 2018 results are not yet compiled, Zarif reinforced that they are clearly experiencing more efficient use of drivers, reducing a reliance on contractors and saving taxpayer dollars. “Through SNOWiQ, we can not only assign (a driver’s) current route, we can queue up all subsequent routes—through the push of a button on a mobile device. There’s tremendous savings in terms of time from our field staff. Our drivers are just in love with the product because it makes their jobs so much easier,” especially for those whose primary language is not English.

Learn more

Montgomery County has received interest in SNOWiQ from nearby jurisdictions and Zarif encourages other local governments to consider this new solution for comprehensive snow removal, using commercially available iOS and Android mobile devices to seamlessly and efficiently dispatch route assignments to treat roadways, and provide real-time information to citizens. Microsoft CityNext is pleased to join with EastBanc Tech to empower this digital transformation, and we look forward to helping other municipalities address their snow removal requirements and promptly deliver information to the public. To learn more, please visit:

• Azure Government to request a free trial
• EastBanc Technologies SNOWiQ
• NACo Achievement Award: Montgomery County
• How Technology is Transforming Snow Removal Operations
• Microsoft CityNext.

The post MC squared: Microsoft cloud for Montgomery County appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

It’s a tall order but the special assistant city manager is up to the challenge of directing Kansas City’s largest-ever infrastructure investment, a 25-year program to meet the requirements of a 2010 federal consent decree requiring a reduction in the volume and frequency of sewer overflows. Now entering year eight of the $4.5 billion program, Shively is working toward his objective by implementing a Microsoft Azure-powered solution from Opti, which specializes in improving water quality, preventing localized flooding and reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). “It’s very important that we find strategic, data-driven solutions that provide cost-effectiveness in order to control the amount of rainwater that enters the combined sewer system,” Shively said. “The hope is to reduce the overall cost of the program by almost a billion dollars over 25 years.”

Last April, Kansas City installed OptiNimbus to automatically control the timing and rate of storm water flowing through its 1.1 million-gallon Gardner Avenue Detention Facility’s combined sewer system, which channels both waste water and storm water through a single pipe, affecting water quality in local streams, rivers and lakes. “We chose the Opti product and the Azure cloud because it’s a smart, intelligent solution,” Shively explained. “Using Opti’s logic, tied to real-time rainfall forecasts and automated controls, allows us to manage the rate of discharge from the detention facility much more efficiently.” In addition to keeping rainwater out of its combined sewer system, the Opti solution is helping Kansas City realize cost savings and comply with the City’s consent decree. “We calculated the cost to implement the OptiNimbus solution at the Gardner Detention Facility at 2 cents per gallon … and that is an incredible value,” he said, noting that other storage solutions range in price from $3.50 to $8 per gallon or more.

Andy Sauer, of Kansas City’s consulting partner Burns & McDonnell, credited the Opti solution’s automatic management and the Gardner facility’s large scale for driving down costs. “We took advantage of an existing site that has the land area—a little over three acres—and we’ve been able to maximize the storage at that location,” he said. “That’s why our cost per gallon is so much more efficient.”

Kansas City is one of more than 130 Opti installations across 21 states, according to Marcus Quigley, Opti founder and CEO. “We are the only company in the world that directly controls storm water infrastructure,” he said “We control, minute by minute, more than 65 million gallons of storage to prevent flooding, improve water quality and reduce combined sewer overflows. Our services that run on Azure control that infrastructure in real time.”

For Shively, who has dedicated his career to providing solutions that are not only cost-effective but will serve Kansas City residents for the next century, it’s critical for utility managers to deliver a return on investment. “It’s our responsibility to provide transparency to residents and to demonstrate the value of service being provided,” he said. “We take that responsibility to heart here in Kansas City. The Opti-Azure system helps us make our sewers smart and helps make the lives of Kansas Citians better.”

While Kansas City is a leader in using the power of the cloud to address its CSO challenges, Opti’s Quigley notes that 770-plus U.S. cities will spend more than $60 billion over the next 20 years to address the same requirement. “We’re saving money, we’re reducing the cost for compliance, we’re reducing (Kansas City’s) capital expenditure for new facilities—but the unique thing we do: actually reduce the wet-weather flow going into the combined sewer when it’s raining means that the receiving waters are cleaner.”

Microsoft CityNext is excited to partner with Opti and empower Kansas City and other cities to become smarter and more sustainable. We look forward to Opti leveraging our secure, trusted cloud for Kansas City’s second implementation later this year and supporting U.S. cities facing similar CSO challenges. Please learn more by visiting:

• Opti
• Microsoft CityNext sustainable cities
• Philadelphia uses smart technology to manage storm water runoff and reduce pollution
• Kansas City’s Billion-Dollar Smart Infrastructure Challenge
• Storm water Made Sustainable – Opti Prepares Us for Tomorrow’s Storms.

The post Using Azure cloud power to improve Kansas City’s water quality appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Making it easy to obtain city services

The second-largest city in Michigan met with our Microsoft CityNext partner OpenCities in late 2016 about developing a new website that would make it easy—and less costly—for citizens to obtain services, such as water, garbage and recycling as well as obtain various permits and complete other city transactions. “A phone call is the most expensive interaction a government can have with a person,” said Becky Jo Glover, director of Customer Service for the City of Grand Rapids. “When they’re on the Internet, it’s a very small amount of charge but, if they can’t find it, what happens: they call, they walk in. We would ask people, ‘Did you check the website before you called here?’ And they would say, ‘Yes, but I couldn’t find it.’ And that was about 75 percent of every call we received.”

Enter OpenCities’ Cynthia Francis and Jack Madans. They found the Grand Rapids’ website typical of most government sites: “They’re hard to navigate, they’re filled with a lot of great information that isn’t curated in a way that makes sense to average people, they’re written in what I would call ‘government-speak’ (which) the average person has trouble understanding,” Francis said. “What they really got excited about was the opportunity to turn their website into a digital services portal and … just make it extremely simple to do business with the City of Grand Rapids.”

Impressive result

Built on the Microsoft Azure Government cloud platform, the new OpenCities website for Grand Rapids is already producing impressive results, which Glover notes in a recent video case study: “We used to have 120,000 calls and walk-ins to our center on an annual basis for just starting refuse and turning water on,” Glover said. “In less than 11 weeks, we have a 79-percent reduction in walk-ins for turning water on.” With more than 89 city services available on its new site, Grand Rapids also has converted half of its 80,000 walk-up payments to online transactions.

In addition to empowering the 180,000 residents of Grand Rapids to conveniently complete city business at any time and on any device, the new digital portal is improving customer service, providing city staff with better intra-department visibility and garnering positive attention. For example, Grand Rapids:

• Recently received recognition from the State of Michigan for using its website and the Microsoft stack (SharePoint, Exchange and Power BI) to deliver hourly voter turnout results on election day.
• Became the first local government in the country to do its own civic user testing. “Every service, every piece of content, every page on our website is tested by a community before we launch,” Glover explained. “They become our content specialists for the entire city.”

True community engagement

Best of all, with the City of Grand Rapids website enabling government that’s always accessible online, the number of positive interactions between the city and its residents is increasing, according to Mayor Rosalynn Bliss: “Every time that I’m with a group of mayors, I feel like one of the topics we’re talking about is community engagement and community-driven decisions. And what we did with our website, in partnership with OpenCities, is one of the most concrete, effective examples of true community engagement.”

Microsoft CityNext agrees and we’re proud to have partnered with OpenCities to help Grand Rapids become a digital city, delivering innovative services. Please learn more at:

• OpenCities
• Microsoft CityNext
• Digital Cities
• Microsoft Azure Government.

The post OpenCities and Azure help Grand Rapids become a digital city appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Safer, more sustainable and accessible cities

Microsoft CityNext and NACTO are closely aligned in helping cities become safer, more sustainable and accessible, with equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. We’re contributing to this mission by working with our transportation partners on an urban mobility strategy aimed at serving all citizens—including those with disabilities. Examples include:

• Connected vehicles that provide predictive vehicle-maintenance alerts to avoid car breakdowns and related traffic congestion and pollution.
• Reducing distracted driving by integrating phone calls, emails and text messaging via Cortana’s voice feature.
• Capabilities that deliver real-time road information to improve safety and vehicle performance.

Join our “WalkShop”

Microsoft will host a “WalkShop”—essentially a field trip—enabling NACTO attendees to tour our Chicago Technology Center and learn about some of the latest transportation innovations from three partners, including:

Amano McGann: As world leaders in manufacturing and distributing hardware and software for the parking industry, Amano McGann has worked with Microsoft technologies since the early 1990s and uses Azure as the cloud platform for its Symphony Analytics and Subscribe API service. They’ll demonstrate technologies that help drivers quickly find parking places and rapidly exit garages, and discuss how they are revolutionizing parking management with the City of Sacramento.

Cubic Transportation Systems: The magnetic ticketing pioneer and leading integrator of payment and information solutions for intelligent travel applications, Cubic will showcase its Azure-based NextBus platform, which is designed to improve multimodal transit agency operations. Cubic also will discuss its work with Miami-Dade County to modernize the EASY Card revenue-management system, which also will run on Azure.

Eastbanc Technologies: Known for its flexible technology solutions, Eastbanc will discuss its powerful TERRAiQ business intelligence platform, which is helping residents of Houston find bus schedules and routes to better plan their day and take advantage of fare and promotional incentives for traveling when traffic is less congested. Eastbanc also will talk about working with Washington, D.C., to tackle the for-hire vehicle challenge through Power BI data analytics and support.

Taking transportation to the next level

For those attending NACTO, please join us from 9 a.m. to noon, Nov. 1, to participate in our immersive WalkShop experience, titled “Taking Transportation to the Next Level.” You’ll be able to see our solutions with your own eyes, talk to our transportation experts about your specific challenges and really understand how our cloud-powered technologies can transform the way people move through your city—and contribute to greater quality of life. Until we meet in Chicago, please check out these resources to help empower your city to become an even better place to live, work and play!

• Microsoft CityNext
• Sustainable Cities
• Digital Cities
• Microsoft Azure
• Power BI.

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