How Qatium integrates your readings
Qatium keeps your network model up to date by updating your readings data regularly. This ensures you have accurate insights for better and faster decision-making. In this article, we’ll show you how Qatium handles your data integration.
Update frequency
Qatium updates data from your network’s key assets, like pumps, junctions, valves, and tanks, at specific intervals. In the table below, there’s a breakdown of how often we update different asset variables:
| Asset variable | Asset update frequency |
| Pump status | Every minute |
| Pump speed | Every minute |
| Valve status | Every minute |
| Valve setting | Every minute |
| Tank level | Once a day at midnight (00:00). After this first time step, the simulation calculates tank levels for the rest of the day. |
| Junction demands/consumptions | Every pattern time step |
| Junction pressure | Every pattern time step |
Heads up:
We expect the values to be in the unit system used by your model. We only consider the valueFactor for unit conversions.
How Qatium adjusts live demands
In Qatium, there are three ways to adjust water demands to reflect real-time data:
- Uploading live data directly using the Ingest API.
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Uploading flowmeter readings in different DMAs (zones). For this to work, each zone needs to have some key information:
- Zone name or ID
- Customer points (places where there is water consumption)
- Inlet and Outlet IDs (the assets where water enters and leaves the zone)
- Flowmeter readings for all inlets and outlets in the zone
- Calculating NRW (non-revenue water): we do this when the network includes both live data and flowmeter readings.
Qatium adjusts the water demand in each zone based on the difference between the amount of water entering and leaving the zone (from the flowmeter readings).
The total flow is then divided among all customer points in the zone, depending on their usual water usage. If a customer point originally has no water usage, it stays the same even after the adjustment.
Special cases for water demand adjustments
- Negative water usage: if the Net flow (Inlet flow - Outlet flow) shows negative water usage, Qatium skips the adjustment.
- Missing flowmeter data: If there is no flowmeter reading at a specific time, Qatium skips the adjustment for that time in the zone.
Time step assignment
Qatium ensures that real-time data is correctly matched with the simulation’s hourly time steps. For instance, data received between 3:00 PM and 3:59 PM will be assigned to the 3:00 PM time step in the simulation, making sure the readings align accurately with your network model.
Handling multiple readings
If we receive multiple readings for the same asset during the same time period, Qatium will select the most recent one. That ensures that your network is working with the latest information available.
What if the readings are missing data?
If Qatium doesn’t receive any data for a certain time, it will use the most recent valid data. If no valid data is available, Qatium will skip updates for that specific time step, and the network simulation will continue with the information available.