Problem
Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) cities across the country overflow hundreds of billions of gallons of raw sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans every year. South Bend is a CSO city and as recently as 2008 overflowed 1.5-2 billion gallons of raw sewage into the Saint Joseph River annually. The City also used to have 25-30 dry weather sewage overflows to the river each year.
Solution
CSOnet is a real time decision support system that empowers the City of South Bend with understanding, control and optimization of its sewer system. CSOnet minimizes sewer overflows to the river and maximizes the capacity of the existing infrastructure.
In 2013 South Bend commissioned and launched a Sewer Watchdog tool within CSOnet that closely monitors the City's sewer system in notoriously problem areas. This tool has empowered crews to be far more effective at solving problems, as they have gone from searching for problems to reactive maintenance, and most recently to predictive/preventative maintenance.