A Bethlehem, PA company shows how to set a course for less polluted waters through innovative technology.
It takes a lot of work for cities to provide clean water for their residents. But it's one of the most important challenges we face today. Our choices on maintaining a clean water system and protecting the watershed have a deep impact on the health and productivity of our nation. The mitigation of
storm-water runoff is key to this, and the EPA's MS4 initiative, short for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System, charts the way for municipalities to implement solutions.
To help with the effort, a new Pennsylvania company called Map Decisions, which has been accepted into the state's acclaimed Ben Franklin TechVentures Incubator program, has developed an innovative GPS software program for monitoring municipal water systems and assisting with MS4's implementation. Home Science recently spoke with Map Decision's CEO, Christian Birch, a Philadelphia native, for details:
What is Map Decisions, how long have you been together, and what is it that you seek to do or do now?
Map Decisions is a company that I recently formed in the beginning of
2012. I've worked for the last 13 years as an engineering consultant
primarily supporting local governments, and I saw a great need in
assisting local governments in complying with regulatory requirements -
in particular one program from the EPA know as the municipal separate
storm sewer program (MS4). It requires municipalities to obtain a permit
to operate their storm sewer systems, and there are a lot of
regulations that are creating both technical and financial burdens for
local governments. We are helping local governments implement the
permit. Our mission is to help governments improve their efficiency
through innovative solutions. Map Decisions seems to redefine the term
"moving at the speed of government." For generations that meant moving
at a snail's pace. There's a lot of room for improvement. We need to
inject innovation and technology and bring efficiency within our government.
Let's look at this subject a slightly different way, and let's take into
consideration the EPA's MS4 mandate. The city of Philadelphia recently
implemented a 25 year plan for green infrastructure. And the way we're
looking at it is that we don't really have the money, the tax money to
pay for the infrastructure renovations that are
typically needed in big cities. Revenues have shrunk. So
what we're doing through some of these mandates is possibly helping us save
money. Do you see the positive
aspects of green infrastructure and the EPA's MS4 program? Do you see how enacting some of these
measures could really benefit cities and actually save tax money - not
just from a burden point of view, but from an environmental and tax saving
perspective? Do you see value in that?
Yes. There's long term value there. The goals and objectives of the
EPA's program are to protect water quality. All the new regulations and
the new methods for protecting water quality at the end of the day will
make our communities stronger, they will save tax payers money, but
there is an upfront cost.
In the last decade there's been a lot of improvement in terms of best
management practices. City, state, county and federal governments are
all pushing to have more sustainable design practices and preserving
water quality. The engineering communities are required to implement
best management practices wherever possible.
And these best management practices are part of the MS4. You have the
construction phase of storm-water management, and the post construction
phase. Construction phase examples are sediment basins that allow
sediment in runoff to settle out so that it doesn't go into streams.
Another example would be a silt fence - the 18" high fabric fences around
construction sites. These are the best management practices for
construction phase. Post-construction examples are rain gardens or vegetative bioswales, or porous pavement.
Those would be the so called "low impact tools" that cities and
municipalities are beginning to utilize? Low impact, perhaps, because
they don't require the city to dig and build larger sewer systems? It
takes some of the burden off the sewer system in general by implementing
these types of green tools. Is that right?
Yes, and encouraging infiltration wherever possible. We need to make
sure that we're not exchanging water between watersheds and we need to
recharge aquifers. In cities like Philadelphia, it's very costly to
expand sewer systems. These low impact solutions do two things: it
prevents [cities] from having to do costly upgrades to the storm-sewer
network, but it also allows them to improve water quality.
Let's focus a bit more on Map Decisions. What tools do you have to offer related to this?
We're developing one now called MS4 Solutions. It's an information
management system. There are two basic components to it. It's a cloud
based information system that allows the user to log on and have control
of the information management system. The very first thing we do is
allow our clients to develop a storm-water management system utilizing
our software.
The second side to our system is mobile software. There
are two mobile utilities that are tied to our information management
system. The first is a mobile inspection utility, and the second is a
mobile mapping utility. Both of our mobile utilities use
location intelligence to help improve efficiency of data collection and
aggregation. Some of the data the EPA is asking for can be difficult to
ascertain, such as weather data - when was the last rainfall event and
what was the volume of rain in the field where you're inspecting. That's
nearly impossible to do when you're sitting out there with [just] a
clipboard. The inspectors using our software don't have to worry about
that. Once they start an inspection the on-board GPS triggers the
intelligence built into our system. Things like the weather data, what
watershed they're in, what are the receding waters - all of these
things are automatically aggregated for the user utilizing the data
models behind our software.
In the near future we will be adding additional modules to our platform
that will allow customers to utilize mobile inspection and mapping
features for other applications, such as roadways, water and wastewater,
and building inspections.
This is primarily for monitoring the existing system or for planning and decision making?
Essentially for monitoring. The EPA wants to make sure we're not
contaminating our nation's water. They're trying to encourage monitoring
to prevent contamination of our waterways.
Interesting stuff, thank you for your time and good luck with your efforts.
Thank you.
Editorial note: The MS4 mandate covers a wide range of public entities to comply with the EPA's requirements, including local governments, municipal authorities, departments of transportation, hospitals and universities.This information was advised by Mr. Birch in a separate interview.
For more information on Map Decisions, LLC, visit www.mapdecisions.com or email them at info@mapdecisions.com or contact by phone at 877-277-5789.
