Toward a Resilient Water Future

[00:00:00] John MacMullen: All right. So welcome everybody to our November 2023 Water Data For Webinar. This is part of a quarterly series that is co hosted by the Cleveland Water Alliance, the Water Environment Federation, and the Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub. This is a series that we have been running, and is now in our third year.

[00:00:35] And so we're really glad to have the audience joining us today for a discussion with a great panel that we have talking about, how water and data are important in this new reality of climate change, and its impacts on water infrastructure in particular in communities. We want to encourage folks to participate, in the discussion today.

[00:01:13] This is a conversation that we want to have between the audience and our panel. And so feel free to post questions or comments at any time, for us to add to that conversation. You can use the Zoom Q& A function to do that. If you'd also like to, just, talk amongst yourselves in the chat, and, and connect with other audience members, feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat and, and talk about your interests there as well.

[00:01:44] But for panelist questions, please post those in the Q & A area, and we will work through those later in the session. So just a quick introduction to myself. I'll be facilitating the conversation today. I'm John McMullen, the Executive Director of the Midwest Big Data Innovation Hub. We are an NSF funded organization that is led from the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign.

[00:02:09] But we have a number of partners across the 12 state Midwest region that we serve. And we have a strong focus on water data, cyber infrastructure for water, and climate resilience. And so we work with partners like CWA and WEF to facilitate new cross sector collaborations, in this space and others.

[00:02:30] So we're happy to have. a great panel joining us today to have that conversation. I'm really happy to welcome Dr. Pinar Balci from, New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Dr. Geneva Gray from the US EPA. And Lilit Yeghiazarian, Professor at University of Cincinnati. and so we're going to turn it over to our panelists to introduce themselves in a little bit more detail and talk about the work that they do to get our conversation started today.

[00:03:07] So I'm going to stop sharing my screen here and turn it over to Pinar. Feel free to take it away whenever you're ready, and tell us a little bit about the work that you do and sort of the unique context that I think you have, you know. Very large coastal city, but one that has a lot of different neighborhoods and different facets that impact water in different ways. So, take it away whenever you're ready.

[00:03:35] Pinar Balci: All right, take it John. And first, I would like to thank you and to organize and communicate for giving the opportunity to be here today. Before I kick it off, I would like to give the attendees a brief overview of who we are. Here at New York City DEP, we are the environmental protection department.

[00:03:58] And we are in charge of providing the water supply to our almost 9M residents now. And, while we supply that water on the back end, we also provide the treatment of that water that we supply every day, so we operate a nearly large treatment plant facilities, we have 14 of those. Over 90 pp station and miles and miles of, toggles of miles of sewers.

[00:04:29] Many others may not know, but we also oversee the air noise and hazardous space. On the environmental side in the city. So, combining those is of course the storm water management. And, as an organization, while we look at these different operations, we really apply that one water concept.

[00:04:55] And you told John, that it's promoted, a lot by the EPA as well as that and the Water Research Foundation. So just to build upon, to give you again, a brief overview, I think drainage is very important when it comes to talking about the climate resiliency and our city is one of the oldest cities here, you know, like Boston, Chicago, we are a very old city.

[00:05:25] So, what that means is most of our system, the drainage system is indeed a combined sewer, and I didn't know anything about combined sewers until I moved to this part of the country. I think we all, most of the time, enjoy that, you know, our system is separated, meaning that the cemetery goes to the cemetery pipe, every time it rains, it goes to the storm pipe. 

[00:05:50] But here in New York City, it's a very unique circumstance that sanitary and storm water combined in one pipe, and that's big pipe, hearing the sanitary storm to the treatment plan and the treatment plans, which is their capacity, which is usually the tool to find dry weather flow during those wet weather events, the access mixed water is being discharged back to the receiving water by creating these combined sewer overflow problems.

[00:06:24] So you can't see the, the balloons are where majority of the CT  is a combined, the pinkish, ethical color is where we are either already separated the system having a sensor and, storm pipe or in currently investing, lots of money to be able to separate that system. And that's the remainder.

[00:06:50] 30 to 35% of the CT is, it's called a separate sew area. We have very small, direct drainage areas, which is mostly in the park land, but that is indeed our drain system of today. So, when we talk about climate, you know, we New York City, the idea is pretty unique as it comes to you know, we have the largest population, but with that being said, we also have a very large impervious area, right?

[00:07:20] Like, if you ever visit New York, you're probably going to enjoy the Prospect Park, Central Park, but if you come to the other boroughs, you see these, thousands and thousands of square footage of, roadways and sidewalks. It's all impervious. So, our imperviousness is around 72%. And what that means is when it rains, and if it rains really hard in a short period of time, that creates that runoff that our sewer system cannot absorb and creates these dangerous flooding conditions in different parts of the city.

[00:07:56] So, you know, flooding is definitely, I think we have been hearing things more and more frequently than ever in the past, but there are other climate threats. One is the, you know, coastal, coastal storms. And here we have this projection that it's potentially going to increase another 50 percent by 2100.

[00:08:21] These numbers are projected by the New York City, on climate panel. So, it's the academic institutions coming together and really looking at the data, the historical data. And use the climate models to project what we as a city expecting to see in the future. So storms are experiencing.

[00:08:43] I think most of it is bad news. The level rise is also expected to increase another up to 30 inch temperature is getting spots and plots every day. And as we are an urban city, we have that building. Effects so I lived for 10 years in Florida. And everybody says, well, you're from Florida, you should get used to the heat.

[00:09:05] And I said, no, this heat feels different. It's absolutely a different heat impact here compared to other regions that you may think it's hot, like Texas or Florida. But because of that heat island impact, it is getting worse in the city. And then the last, the last one is the presentation that I mentioned that we are seeing tremendous increase in this cloudburst event.

[00:09:29] And what I mean by that is that the intensity of the rain in a short period of time keeps happening more and more frequently and really endangering our residents, but also causing widespread flooding in different parts of the city. So, this map, I love it because I wish I had looked at this map before I moved here from Florida.

[00:09:55] So, you know, one of the reasons that really drove us to the Northeast after spending 10 years in West Palm Beach, we were like, okay, you know, no more hurricanes. Rain is not going to be as bad. Let's move to our teeth and so I brought the whole family almost 11 years ago from South Florida and 3 months later, we got hit by Sandy, which was a major hurricane.

[00:10:21] 1st time hit New York City and most recently, we are having the very high intensity event. You may have heard we hit unfortunately, the experience from either 2 years ago that resulted in loss of lives and most recently, this past September, we got more than 2. 2 inches per hour of rain that also created a lot of flowing streams on the roadways in the different parts of the city.

[00:10:53] So that trend is according to no projections are going to get higher and higher in the upcoming year. So we as the city have to be really prepared for those different climates trip. So, one thing I want to mention, and I think John is going to ask us more questions on this, but.

[00:11:15] You know, to be able to plan in such an ultra urban city, that's almost 9, 000, 000 residents. We have to really rely on good data and so that we know, right with the limits of funding we have without affecting our water rates, which becomes an affordability issue for the low income residents, we have to tackle down, like, where are those high priority areas in the city as a whole that we can go and maybe bring some of these low hanging fruit or some of the critical infrastructure problems more strategically.

[00:11:51] So, along those lines, right before IDA, we published these 3 different maps. It was a 3 plus year effort. We had partnered with CUNY, which is our city of New York. I'm some other academic to be able to pull this very complex HMH model. To understand where are our vulnerabilities? And these maps do exist on our website right now.

[00:12:20] We encourage all of our residents to take a look to understand where they are in, corresponding to these blue dots. We run 3 different scenarios, starting with the water, storm water floods with the current sea levels. And then we added on more and more to see what would be the worst case scenario.

[00:12:41] If we were to get a very extreme flood and combine it with the 2000 ADC level, which part of the city is going to get flooded. So that gives the good perspective, but also an education tool to help our residents that, you know, we, the city, right, which we have the government workforce and funding, we are doing our best and expeditiously as much as possible, but if the homeowner or a property owner, this gives an indication of, you know, if you are reading the long line area that you are in the midst of the very dark plot area, you probably to think about, like, before a train, you know, you'll have to elevate some of your valuable belonging from the basement, you have to be cognizant about the entry points of the water. So, this became a very, very important tool for us, not only for capital planning, but also for educating our ratepayers. So, I'm going to stop here, John, otherwise I can take all the time you may have and hopefully there's some of the questions that we are going to get into as well.

[00:14:04] John MacMullen: Absolutely. And we'll definitely come back to some of those challenges that you mentioned, because, I think, you know, beyond the coastal, flooding and sea level rise issues. There's a lot of local neighborhood challenges that are being faced as well.

[00:14:21] And so we'll definitely come back to that. But I want to broaden out a little bit with Geneva's perspective. To help us understand a little bit how some of the challenges that Pinar talked about are translate those for us into the national mission that the EPA has in helping communities deal with that risk assessment and those challenges around understanding where to commit resources to mitigate some of these problems.

[00:14:52] Geneva Gray: Thank you, John. That's a great lead in. I'm Geneva Gray. I am with the Creating Resilient Water Utilities Initiative at EPA. I'm a physical scientist, so I do a lot of the data behind the tool and also interacting with water utility is, so What the Creating Resilient Water Utility Initiative at EPA does is we assist wastewater and drinking water utilities with qualifying the climate change risk and understanding, that risk and we assist all sorts of water utilities across the country. And each perspective is very unique. So New York has an impervious surface system. They have the combined wastewater and sewage issues, which we do. Like she mentioned, see a lot in the New England, and Northeast area.

[00:15:47] But different areas have different issues. A lot of our utilities in the country are dealing with drought right now, and that stresses the system in completely different ways. And climate change is likely to change the frequency and severity of drought in the future in different Regions in different ways.

[00:16:05] So, what climate resilience means to water utilities in the, from my perspective, is really, a way to empower water utilities with information and data. So the person who knows the most about local risk and climate is the person on the ground working with the water utilities? They know we had a flood 10 years ago, and it did this to our system.

[00:16:37] They know, you know 20 years ago, there was a storm surge event off of the Great Lakes and it flooded these systems. Well, what's going to happen if that event happens again? What climate change due to that sort of event? They know a lot about their risk. In the current climate paradigm, however, that's shifting as the Earth warms, the atmosphere becomes supercharged with more moisture and these high rain events are gonna happen more frequently and, at greater intensity.

[00:17:13] So, how do you when you have this historical context of what these sort of events already do to your system. How can you use that knowledge and then augment it knowing what the climate models are projecting for the future. So what we do is assist water utilities through either direct technical assistance through trainings through workshops.

[00:17:39] Sometimes they just send us an email and we kind of have to work it out with them. But, you know, we talk about their individual risk and help them walk through, you know, some, what they feel is their assets that may be at most at risk. What are their big climate drivers? And we also frame it in an economic framework to show the direct cost benefits of improving a system versus, going forward with maybe sometimes in particular scenarios, it's not as cost effective to improve one place, but to prove somewhere else. So they could really create a case for when advocating for budgets or applying for FEMA grants or state revolving funds to try to find the case to upgrade their systems. So, really, I view our role when, interfacing with these water utilities is, empowering them through data.

[00:18:45] So we have, a list of climate change projections through our tool, the create tool and, that's created with no E on the end. And we walk them through, different climate scenarios that are a bit, kind of, there's a lot of climate data out there. And so we present it in a way that tries to not overwhelm a water utility so that they can pick certain scenarios.

[00:19:14] And then toggle between different, different risk profiles so that they can get a sense of the uncertainty of the future. And then also, land on what they feel is the most appropriate scenario for their utility. So, we want to empower utilities to feel comfortable using climate change data in their long term planning.

[00:19:40] And we want to show that these problems are something that can be solved through infrastructure advancements or through adaptation to future climates. So it's really kind of empowering work for the utilities when they go through. It's a lot of, it's a bit of a time commitment to really dig in and and focus on what a specific utility needs.

[00:20:14] It takes a lot to build that one on one relationship, but in the long run, it's really worth it. And then, the utility gets a nice report at the end that they can show to upper management to, whatever, allegedly, governs their budget so that they can advocate for a more resilient water utility.

[00:20:37] I'll kind of leave it there. I have a lot that I can say about climate data. I'm a bit of a data dork. So I have a background in atmospheric sciences. I did a lot of climate modeling before coming to EPA. So I'm really excited to talk about the climate data, component of the water system and how we use all of that data to move forward to a more resilient and adapted future.

[00:21:09] John MacMullen: Great. Thanks very much. Geneva. And we will definitely come back to that issue in a moment because, you know, we have data from EPA and other federal agencies. We have local data and utility data. And so, you know, thinking about integrating those and getting more than we would get individually is a challenge that we can talk through.

[00:21:32] But let's move to Lillet now. Lillet, you have some interesting history in the water space, and you've also done a lot of thinking around the connections between water and energy. You have a new NSF funded project in that space as well, so please give us an introduction to your work and maybe talk a little about those synergies that you see between water and energy.

[00:21:57] Lilit Yeghiazarian: Sounds good. Thank you, John, for the invitation and, welcome everybody. I seem to have collected different flavors of engineering in my career. I have a degree in electrical engineering, then industrial engineering, and then environmental and bioengineering. And as you hop through these different disciplines, you start realizing that the natural and, Built infrastructure are connected and they're intertwined with communities.

[00:22:29] So my take on this is that it's impossible to separate one from the other and to achieve resilience in any sector, in any area. We really need to take a holistic view of the entire system. So let me share a couple of slides. I was inspired by Pinar and I would like to show you a little bit. I'll tell you a little bit about the project that kind of started this whole thing, and that was called the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network.

[00:23:01] It's funded by NSF to the tune of six and a half million dollars, and it's centered on urban flooding. And you know, the human and economic costs from flooding are still rising, but we're having a hard time understanding the true impact of floods on cities. So this series of photographs is really a manifestation of what happens in a city when you get hit by a major storm, right?

[00:23:27] So you have. The power grid that goes out and then the sewers, the pumps are not functioning anymore. So the sewer starts backing into the streets when you have this combined sewer overflow systems, like in New York city and in Cincinnati, many old cities across the country have that problem. You have all of this backing into the streets and into the streams.

[00:23:50] Polluting water and presenting a massive, public health hazard. So you have displaced communities, you have broken bridges, the drinking water facility is out. You cannot get out of the house to drive anywhere because the roads are flooded. So what we're really seeing in this series of photographs are cascading failures that are propagating through the fabric of a modern city and the problem here is that what we see here is that we all understand that cities physically are functionally are connected. Right? So you have this multiple sectors. You have the power grid, the sewerage system, public health, locks and dams, socioeconomics, transportation system. All of that is connected.

[00:25:26] The problem is that the data is not connected, right? So if the data are not connected, there is no way we can truly understand the full impact, the complete impact of a flood on a city. So the solution that we've built as part of this project is to build this urban multiplex inventory and urban multiplex is a way we describe cities as a network of networks.

[00:25:51] So we combine data. We integrate data across multiple sectors like the power grid, the buildings, the roads, superfunds, the data set from EPA, the underground storage tanks also from EPA. And we intersected with flood forecasting and hydrology. And we also add other data that are coming from multiple other sources, that tell us everything about the socioeconomic impact on the city.

[00:26:23] So, The result, we have classified and integrated information about 150 million critical assets across the entire country. And they all come from disparate data sets, like you see here, different colors of dots here represent different data sets that we were able to aggregate. And this is on the right here, you have the entire continental U.S. and every single building, airport, everything is there. And to take it further, we do provide forecasts. At this critical location. So that's one thing. And perhaps even more importantly, we look at the propagation of failures across these critical assets. So here, for example, in this inset, you have an electric asset that went out and we know because the data are connected.

[00:27:15] We understand that because of that water asset, We'll go out and that will impact hospitals. It will impact schools. It will impact roads. So we can model this propagation of failure across the fabric. And finally, we do a total economic analysis across every single sector. We'll look at the government.

[00:27:36] We'll look at the savings. We look at industry and we break out all breakdown, all these industries and services according to the sectors. And we can actually calculate the total impact. Of a flood in a city. If a bridge is out, how is it going to impact the regional economy? So I'll stop here, and to add to the project that John just mentioned, we just got a large grant to look at the water and energy nexus in this context. So here we're looking at the floods and the entire infrastructure. But in the new project, we're also placing a lot of emphasis on how the water and energy nexus play out in these extreme scenarios. So to conclude, my view of this is that we need to approach things As a system, as a highly complex system and data is the tool that allows us to interrogate that system and really plan for the future as well as deal with disasters on a short scale.

[00:28:41] John MacMullen: Thank you so much for that overview, Lilith. So Pinar, I want to come back to you for our second theme here, which is how we deal with data in that environment that Lilith was talking about where you have cascading failures. And you have a system that is not really owned or controlled by any one entity.

[00:29:03] I, you know, I'm thinking of some of the pictures we may have seen in the news from, from New York City, where there's people in the subway waiting through, you know, hip deep, water after a flood, or there's, cars on the expressway that are, not able to move anywhere, you know, that obviously implies other, agencies beyond your own, there's the M. T. A. and there's the Department of Transportation and there's the Electrical Utility Grid, as Lilit mentioned, can you talk a little about how New York is addressing some of those challenges around cascading failures where you need to have multiple agencies and utilities involved in those discussions?

[00:29:47] Pinar Balci: Sure yeah, I think, you know, maybe I should start it off. Our network is not as robust as what Lilith described, including the other critical structure necessarily. But what we have done, which I showed you the slide, we modeled our sewer system, right, like our drainage system, which indeed the city's flood resistant capacity relies on.

[00:30:24] In this city our sewer infrastructure is built for a five year storm, which on average, can handle 1. 75 inch per rainfall event, but there are parts of the cities, right? Like, especially where I live in Queens and where my office is not built to that standard. So it's there on three year standards. Other parts are built only for one year standards.

[00:30:46] So, what we have done, we have taken that data and remodeled it. They're the H and H modeling and those are the maps that we are publicly believing. And I think that's really set the next generation of capital planning for us for the water utility, but also it's get the advantage to Metro North.

[00:31:14] Or M. T. A. or any other connected utilities, right? Those gas providers, electricity providers, any other critical infrastructure providers to use them to be able to address like, you know, are their critical infrastructure falling within those zones? And if so, will they be thinking about either elevating or protecting that asset more than today?

[00:31:39] So that's something that I think we Open up this new world of, you know, I think most of the utilities, we all have our own data. I think that it. Explain it really well, but we keep it close to her chest and we only share it internally. So, this particular mapping exercise kind of told all the others you talk to providers, critical infrastructure, hospitals, right?

[00:32:04] Duty comes to us, the department of transportation, and they say, we want to look at capital projects differently here. Can you give us more information in that particular blue zone? Do you have the data for the 5 year plot? Do you have the data for the 10 year plot? So that's really helped us as an urban city to be able to tailor our.

[00:32:27] Capital planning more strategically, but, you know, we, the model is a model. I think that it could take more than I can. So, whatever gets sent, it's out. Right? So,the better the data, the better the projection for simulations of that particular model. So, we recognized that gap and we said, you know, how can we improve this model?

[00:32:50] It's a flat model. It's not easy to model. Because of topography, you know, in some parts of the city, as you highlighted, John, you know, it may not be simulated as well as the local foundation. So, we've been partnering with NYU, New York University, and CUNY, and deploying these storm sensors in different parts of the city, particularly on the street landscape.

[00:33:15] And what we are hoping this data is really going to give us is, like, it's going to measure the flood levels. At a street level, and it's going to tell us, like, what is that dep above the above the roadway and are we, you know, if we were to measure now, we deployed 7, 6 of them now, and I'll drop the link.

[00:33:39] To give you an idea, but if we deploy enough of them, it's really going to help us to validate and calibrate this model in a way that can be used strategically. Actually, indeed, relating the real time condition in the future. So that's 1 initiative, like a very data driven initiative. As you can imagine, it's very labor intensive, deploying those storm sensors, maintaining them, collecting the data, QA, QC them, and then finding the way like, okay, this is the good part of the data that I can use to validate or calibrate this model is still in the works.

[00:34:20] But we learned a lot. Over the last two years. It is an expensive endeavor. We sense, I think we are funding it for seven plus million and there's some grant funding coming in. So give or take it, the 10 plus million dollars effort to be able to deploy ultimately, by 2020 sector or 2027, around 500 sensors along the New York City to understand the, you know, how it's local communities reacting and are they some parts of the city more vulnerable than others and then keep, you know, redoing our modeling, to be able to give us a better. Decision, so that's where we are now. And, you know, I think there are, I've been hearing from some other cities and again, maybe, you know, I know it better than I do, but this is not the 1st time.

[00:35:19] Right? If he's doing it, it just takes time and labor intensive, but it is a must to have, in my opinion, if you're going to keep looking at and providing those new zealand solutions in a more strategic way, given the capital funds are very limited, right? So we want to spend the money the right way.

[00:35:42] John MacMullen: Absolutely. So I want to come back to that issue of sensors and data quality in a minute, Lola, to see what your experience is in bringing in that kind of data to the models, but let's stay at the high level with the EPA for a minute. And Geneva. You all collect data, so does USDA and USGS, and, you know, we've heard from Pinar that the local folks do as well.

[00:36:10] So what, what are you aware of at the national level in terms of thinking about integration of at least the agency data, you know, the federal agency data? Are there working groups or are there people working across the agencies to do any of that?

[00:36:28] Geneva Gray: Yeah, that's a great question. So when I think of where the integrative source of federal climate data lives, things tend to change once different agencies start.

[00:36:41] You know, the natural conclusions of those work groups, things tend to be housed at the national centers for environmental information. So, in CI, it's part of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it is a free data source for anyone.

[00:37:03] It is, and it can be sometimes overwhelming to use, but it's almost all of it is there. What we use from USGS and create is their streamflow network data. So the sensors that are on little rivers and different locations where the water ends up flowing through and creating potential flood hazards, we use that network data in our system to understand the historical baseline of flooding.

[00:37:39] To get an adequate sense of current risk so that we can then understand what the future risk will be on top of that. So a different sources of data are also great. We don't only use federal source data. Some of it is academic or state level. So there is a certain gridded data products that are used from, I think they started at Oregon State and now maybe they've spun off into a more independent, but the prism data product, is also something that is hosted by an academic institution, or at least started that way.

[00:38:18] Maybe now it's a nonprofit, but, It's wonderful how they, as someone not really in the federal government sphere have, integrated a bunch of different state level mesonets, which are, you know, small, station sensor networks across, smaller regions. They, they ingest all of these different places like Oklahoma or North Carolina, and build out this awesome, data product.

[00:38:50] So it's almost one of those things where, you know, the federal government, when they're, working together and dealing with all these different, networks, that can sometimes be a longer process and it eventually gets there, but it's nice to see when, different, sources like academic institutions and state level institutions are also able to just grab things together and put it out there.

[00:39:15] Thinking a lot about, kind of on the ground sensors and like, getting an understanding of what the current state of the environment is so that one can respond directly in an emergency scenario that's more of a, Noah. It's a realm of things that the National Weather Service and such so, here at EPA where we're focused on, we have a sensing network that mostly does air pollution sensing.

[00:39:56] So that integrates very well with our. Our air pollution, modeling, but we don't personally have, like, a water sensing network. So we have to rely heavily on the USGS and Noah for their precipitation data and their stream gauging networks. And that information is free and federal. It's paid for by the taxpayers.

[00:40:18] So everyone could get it. Anyone could get it. and it's nice to be able to have those open options. Other data that we are dealing with a bit more right now is that there is now a new generation of global climate models, and we're working on integrating those and seeing how those new trends and projections mesh with what we're seeing in the current environment.

[00:40:53] So, we are working to update our create tool to incorporate this new generation of climate model data, using the same data that's going to be in the new national climate assessment that is likely to come out before the end of the year, assuming nothing hinders that process. So, with that knowledge, we have to kind of reevaluate all of the new trends and new scenarios that the IPCC has defined because we've spent this whole time with the previous generation of climate models, you know, teaching and interacting and going back and forth with water utilities on what these mean and other data users, what this means.

[00:41:46] And now we have Kind of this shift in the paradigm of, we're not dealing with, you know, RCPs, representative concentration pathways. We're dealing with SSPs. So sure. I, it's even one of those things, SSPs, it's just now socioeconomic and shared pathways. So it's kind of just a different way to look at things.

[00:42:09] And what do all these numbers behind those letters mean? And, it can be, A bit overwhelming in the sense that I'm, I can definitely see if somebody were to come in at a city trying to get in on the climate resilience and adaptation plan for their water system, or for the really broader system as little put out that it's an all interconnected system it can.

[00:42:36] It can be overwhelming. So you don't even just have that, like, different data sources from the federal government observing from different locations. You also have now, you know, these different climate scenarios to look at on top of what you are observing. So, I can see where it can be incredibly overwhelming for data users, and anyone having to deal with big data. 

[00:43:04] John MacMullen: Forsure. Yeah. So Lilith, you've heard now from Anar about some of the local data that's being collected and the instruments for that and from Geneva about the larger scale, agency data. you know, as a data aggregator and curator,.

[00:43:21] What are you facing in terms of challenges for bringing that data together from different sources? How do you make that work in your models?

[00:43:30] Lilit Yeghiazarian: That's an excellent question. And I wish that there were more places and the type of leadership that we have in New York City that would actually produce those high resolution data sets.

[00:43:42] Because without them, without those high resolution data, it is very difficult to truly understand what are those depths, on the ground going to be and what is going to be the impact. And indeed, how do you allocate resources? How do you evacuate people? How do you increase the resilience of different infrastructures and communities?

[00:44:05] Different communities are going to have different mobility, abilities. So all of the data is really, really important and we don't have enough of it. So thank you Pinar for doing that. That's excellent. And the way we approach the work that we do is we recognize that there are going to be pockets of high resolution data available.

[00:44:33] So for those across the country, it is possible to actually make those accurate forecasts and truly help facilitate resource allocation. But the federal data that are produced at the much larger scale give you a coarser resolution, perhaps less accurate information. But that is, you know, an alternative is nothing right?

[00:45:00] So if you have communities that don't have the resources, don't have the leadership that we have in, for example, New York City, then those communities will have to work with data that are less accurate, that are at coarser resolution. For example, it could be on the resolution of a watershed or a catchment within a watershed, not necessarily at blocks or neighborhoods level.

[00:45:24] So you have to have that flexibility to go between high and lower resolutions. That's how we deal with it. If anybody has better ideas, I would love to hear that.

[00:45:38] John MacMullen: It's definitely a challenge. And I think the more you drill down, the more challenging it becomes because you may have data from different sources that are theoretically capturing the same kind of information, but they may be Storing it in different ways or using different measurement systems or something.

[00:45:55] And so you have to normalize and curate, and it becomes very challenging to do that in some cases.

[00:46:03] Lilit Yeghiazarian: Exactly. I think those are difficult questions, but they are solvable because we have technologies to do them, but generating data to begin with and curating the data and making sure that the meters and sensors are working properly. That's a huge investment and very intensive work.

[00:46:26] John MacMullen: So our time is going very quickly here. I want to wrap up the panel discussion with some thoughts about where things are heading in the next, let's say, 3 to 5 years in terms of the issues that you all have raised. But I do see a question here in the Q&A asking about Pinar, the hydrologic and hydraulic modeling systems that you all used in New York City for the flood maps, is there some documentation of, of how you all did that, that might be interesting for folks outside that region to hear about?

[00:47:02] Pinar Balci: Yeah, we did, release the stone water resiliency, effort that we partnered with CUNY. I believe it's on our website, although our website is not very easy to walk through.

[00:47:16] So that is not available to exist. We have used the ICM, I don't know for those modelers, they may be familiar, but it's an InfraWorks ICM model that does the 2D modeling, not only the, you know, HMH modeling, but it indeed takes into account the surface flooding perspective to it.

[00:47:41] So, yes, it is available on our website. I'm going to Google myself now, but it is published by us in collaboration with, you know, so, city nurse of New York. 

[00:48:00] John MacMullen: Thank you. So let's talk a little about the places where there may be opportunities to have an impact in the next few years, or what are some of the challenges that are still to be addressed? We can open this up as broadly as you all would like to talk about here. But where are things heading?

[00:48:23] What should people be mindful of if they're at a utility or they're in a local community government organization or they're thinking about? Where to do some research that would be helpful in this space, what are some spaces that you feel are really important for us to focus on? Maybe we can start with Lilit there.

[00:48:49] Lilit Yeghiazarian: I think that what we need to focus on currently is understanding the vulnerabilities and focusing on issues of environmental justice, because just talking about water quantity, It's very important, but when we have events like flooding or events like droughts, there is a whole slew of other issues that these things come bring together.

[00:49:18] for example, when we talk about floods, it's not just the amount of water, but Is that water contaminated? So if you have combined sewers and you have all this matter spread on the streets and playgrounds, you're going to have huge issues with public health. You could have acid drainage from mines, and things like that impacting.

[00:49:40] And obviously the most vulnerable communities are the ones that are underprivileged and they don't have the resources to deal with that. So I think that at the state and city and federal level, these are the issues that we should focus on. And without data, it's impossible to deal with these types of issues. So I'll stop there.

[00:50:03] John MacMullen: Maybe we can flip it to Pinar here because I think that you are doing some work on some of those very issues, right? How to address the challenges in particular neighborhoods where there's not a lot of resources, but potentially a lot of impact. Right?

[00:50:16] Pinar Balci: Absolutely. Yeah. I was just going to say, I think it really opened up the door for me to chime in.

[00:50:21] But you know, the tool is the tool. Right now we know where's the highest, vulnerable areas of the whole city. But going back to the issue that literature is, where are the socially vulnerable areas, right? Like where we haven't done these investments and I think Genova is, can talk about the EPAs infrastructure bill, right?

[00:50:45] Like we are as a utility, we are indeed incentivized to look at our infrastructure's next capital investment with a different plan and prioritize these EJ or socially vulnerable areas. So, given that fact, we looked at it and we took it to heart and we said, okay. What are those social vulnerable areas and are they other critical infrastructure?

[00:51:12] You know, what is the population density in those areas? Are we, you know, going back to John? Do we need to think about that? Metrolords, you know, it's another entity, but it should be cognizant about the transportation, the schools. You know, the hospital, the fire and police station. So we wrote all those like critical infrastructure data and combined it with the social vulnerability index.

[00:51:36] That was the available data at the time from CDC. And many of you might be familiar with that, it really targets the different income levels and so forth. And then, you know, when you look at it in our 5 borough city, there's only certain neighborhoods pops up to the surface.So we, you know, looking at, like, hundreds and hundreds of neighborhoods, we kind of, like, condensed it to 30 plus neighborhoods that really checks the mark.

[00:52:06] And now we are indeed focusing on those neighborhoods and planning. Like, near term solutions, then most of the utilities, you know, we always think like, is it the green? Is it the gray approach? Do we have to build pumping and storage? Or can we do it with more low hanging fruit? So, we came up like, maybe neither, maybe we should call it the blue green approach.

[00:52:32] And what we have done is like, really combining the low cost. But effective solutions under this cloth first management portfolio. So we created a brand new program. It's called cloth first management. It's on our website again, and what it targets is those 30 plus areas that are socially vulnerable, but also there is a tremendous critical infrastructure.

[00:52:59] Is located and we are now looking at these distributed blue green infrastructure solutions to provide some near term. A lot of resilience in those neighborhoods and this look kind of like this planning look, give us an advantage to actually obtain some federal funding. Geneva. We are successful bringing more than 200 Million dollar federal funds for those neighborhoods.

[00:53:26] So more work to be done. I think, you know, more and more science is needed so we can apply this adaptive management approach, right? This is all new. The blue green implementation is new. I get a lot of questions. So, like, how long did they last? How are you going to maintain them? What is the maintenance frequency?

[00:53:45] So there's still some elephant in the room, but I think the science really working with our partners, particularly academic partners, is going to help us to learn more. And adopt as we continue to build this infrastructure and bring different needs to our residents.

[00:54:05] John MacMullen: Excellent. I put the link to that cybers management program in the chat for folks as well. Geneva, can you help us close out today with some thoughts about the federal dimensions  to this?

[00:54:16] Geneva Gray: Yes, so I think this has been such a great panel in that work on on the really hyper local scale and I'm stuck not stuck, but, you know, I'm in at the EPA and I look at a much larger conus or kind of scale.

[00:54:36] So it's so ideally what we want to do is, somehow tried to bridge in the middle so that we can, you know, work together and shepherd the large scale data down to the hyper local scales that Lilit was talking about, and that their information can also filter up and inform the larger scale. On that note, there is a large federal effort next week.

[00:54:57] This is about the future of climate data. The USGCRP is hosting a huge data smit. Well, it's a huge kind in our community, which means it's 50 people. We're doing a data smit where people who create data and people who use data are coming together. And we're really focusing on areas that have been historically neglected in the larger climate modeling data. We're trying to think about issues and how that impacts the large scale data production effort, I can definitely send a link to the event, gonna have to find it, but where, climate model data has, kind of historically not been thinking a lot about the social component, but we want to see how, how we can do that.

[00:55:53] So that's going to be a discussion. Also, Lillet mentioned the fine scale data. A lot of the big data that we produce is on, like, watershed and that's, if it's a good, like, it's a huck eight kind of scenario that means it's fine scale from our perspective, but not from somebody who's at the city and needs to know if they're, you know, stormwater, clean infrastructure, nature based solution product is going to, you know.

[00:56:18] What's that scale, though, that's also going to be a data discussion that we'll have next week. And I hope that I can find this link really quick before we have to close out so that people can have that resource that can keep tabs on what we're going to be doing, but we're, we're trying to come together and we're not going to get perfect, you know, it's science. It's an iterative process, but each new generation of climate modeling and data development efforts try to get us closer and closer. So what's needed at the local scales for communities. So it's really just an exciting time.

[00:56:55] John MacMullen: Absolutely. Thank you so much. And thanks to our panelists today for giving us that high level, but very low level and precise view of the challenges as well. You're all doing really innovative work. And I know that our community will be really interested to watch this recording and talk about ways to get engaged as well.

[00:57:18] And so just a quick reminder that this is an ongoing series. We plan to continue that in 2024. And so you can check back on our website for future events and feel free to reach out and propose topics and guests for us to talk with as well. We've had a great response from, across the different sectors engaged in water around these issues.

[00:57:43] So, thanks to our guests again. Thanks to our audience. And we look forward to seeing you in a future episode.

‍