Pentaho Data Catalog Automates Data Processes for Arizona’s Department of Water Resources to Improve Water Supply Availability and Conservation 

Water is one of society’s most vital and overlooked resources. Current and future data shows that many parts of the world – including the southwest U.S. – are at risk for severe water shortages in the not-distant future. According to the Nature Conservancy, experts predict a 20-25% decline in west regional precipitation in the Colorado River Basin, which has seen historic drought conditions since 2000 and where over 40 million people currently reside.  

These trends directly impact Arizona, with the Colorado River being Arizona’s largest renewable water source and second only to groundwater in the overall water supply mix. These conditions are what the Arizona Department of Water Resources (DWR) faces when tasked with the vital mission of protecting, conserving and improving the state’s water supply. 

Searching for Signals in Noisy Data 

The Arizona DWR oversees the management of nearly 6 trillion gallons annually for over seven million residents. Its extensive asset portfolio generates data from over 300,000 wells and surface water applications. The lack of a centralized metadata repository and limited resources to hire additional personnel made it challenging for DWR staff to locate essential datasets. 

“We struggled to find people and affordable tools that could completely fulfill our requirements,” noted Lisa Williams, Manager of the Office of Enterprise Data Management at Arizona DWR. “We needed a business glossary, but most catalog software didn’t sell that separately, so we created our own in SQL. However, we later realized we could not implement more mature data management best practices without a data catalog tool.” 

Gaining Intelligence Through Automation 

In May 2020, the DWR turned to Pentaho Data Catalog to help streamline data management and scale its ability to leverage data across the organization.  

The DWR realized significant time to value and minimal downtime, with the entire data discovery, metadata cataloging and platform migration taking just two weeks. And by leveraging native machine learning capabilities, Pentaho Data Catalog was trained to recognize various structured data types, ensuring that sensitive information related to water rights and usage was handled securely. 

The Department can now understand, integrate and analyze its unique and critical datasets to meet the needs of Arizona’s water users, planners and decision makers.  

“One of the reasons we’re excited about Universal Data Intelligence is that you just need to type in ‘well’, and an accurate and comprehensive report of over 300 instances of that data element in our transactional databases, data warehouse, document management system and spatial data is ready for export, which is saving us so much time,” said Williams. 

Transforming Operations and Driving Collaboration 

The enhanced visibility into data provided by Pentaho Data Catalog has increased confidence in data quality with a centralized metadata repository that staff can quickly access to understand existing data, streamlining processes for licensing and applications. 

The catalog also enables consistent frameworks across the department, enabling groundwater hydrologists, water resource managers and application developers to standardize how they compile and analyze water usage. The result is a more accurate view of Arizona’s water resources that supports sustainable demand and supply planning. 

“We are now modernizing all our licensing and applications processes. Having a centralized metadata repository enables our staff and the consultants to quickly understand existing data used in online and automated processes during the project discovery process. And when data is migrated to the cloud, we’ll know the complete lineage of the data,” said Williams.  

With better data visibility through Pentaho Data Catalog, Arizona’s DWR can confidently engage with stakeholders to collaborate more effectively on addressing water resource challenges, with improved internal operations paving the way for a more resilient future in water management. As water challenges grow, so does the need for intelligent solutions, and Arizona is setting a precedent for how technology can transform resource management in an increasingly demanding environment. 

Learn more about Pentaho Data Catalog at https://pentaho.com/products/pentaho-data-catalog/ or request a demo at https://pentaho.com/request-demo/.