Kymen Vesi

KeyAqua experiences of Kymen Vesi

Kymen Vesi is a regional water and sewer utility company operating in the region of Kymenlaakso in Southeastern Finland. Kymen Vesi provides its clients with good quality drinking water reliably, safely and economically. The company takes care of the waste-water treatment of the region, respecting environmental values. Kymen Vesi operates the water supply network of 800 kilometers including trunk lines and another 800 kilometers of sewage lines. Households served by the network cover 72 000 inhabitants, which is around 95 % of the whole population of Kotka, Pyhtää and Anjalankoski regions. In addition to its own network, Kymen Vesi operates with more than twenty water co-operatives in the region.

The Company’s own mapping team takes care of the entire water and wastewater network mapping, maintenance of property information and documentation. ”We use the KeyAqua solution of Keypro for management of the location and property values of our entire network”, says Timo Kurittu, the cartographer of the water supply and continues: ”Besides our own network, we supply local water cooperatives with network mapping and documentation services. This is how we get all utility networks on the same map view”. Kymen Vesi shows the direction on the national level in providing help and active support to the many water cooperatives in the region.

Hassle-free online access to network information is for Kymen Vesi a very important feature. This includes both the internal operations and co-operation with other stakeholders. ”For us it is important that we can deliver the location information of our constructions to the cities, other utilities and constructors of the region”, emphasizes Kurittu and specifies: ”We want that our own or our contractors' activities do not endanger our own or other utility networks. We expect the same from others utility networks as well. Only the seamless information sharing of Keypro solutions makes this possible.” Through the implementation of the Keypro KeyMap joint utility map solution, Kymen Vesi has online access to a number of networks of other utilities in their KeyAqua solution.

Easy access to and maintenance of network information is a requirement for efficient operations of a water utility. A common KeyAqua system has been particularly useful as Kymen Vesi was born through the merger of the three regional municipalities in the region.”At the start we had the regions of Kotka, Pyhtää and Anjalankoski – and all had slightly different arrangements and operating methods of network information”, recalls Kurittu. Now all stakeholders at Kymen Vesi can access the same, up-to-date network information with their browsers: land surveyors, planning department, network department, installers, sales and company management. The Mapping team even uses KeyAqua directly on the field with their laptop equipped with a mobile connection.

How does Kymen Vesi then use KeyAqua on a day-to-day basis? First of all, KeyAqua is the geographical information management system of the network. KeyAqua can easily distinguish all network elements from water towers through duct network up to wastewater treatment plants. All network components can be visualized with annotations, accessories and element condition information. The system covers operating areas, water supplies as well as basins. All these can be seen on four different background maps.

But Kurittu states that KeyAqua is much more than just a location map system: ”We use KeyAqua for managing the network such as handling the faults and repairs and CCTV recordings and planning the renovation projects. In the future, the use of KeyAqua will increase”. Kurittu states that in the near future the management of the water movement and properties will play a more significant role in KeyAqua. He says that in the sewage network it is essential to manage the storm water management and flow monitoring. In addition in the water network it is important to link the strategic network measurement points to network elements and model the fault information dynamically on the network map. “Thanks to collaboration with Keypro we now have a network information solution that very well satisfies the special needs of a modern water utility provider”, states Kurittu. 

Story continues

Read more how Kymen Vesi has been using KeyAqua in daily operations and what kind of new benefits water utility has achieved lately by using KeyAqua GIS. Customer story can be read here.