The Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District is a regional drainage authority responsible for keeping the residents of Riverside County safe from floods and storm waters. The district oversees floodplain management and development reviews, flood warning and early detection, and National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) compliance monitoring across a 2,700 square mile area.
Challenges
Performing these responsibilities present the district with several complex challenges including:
- Managing a large inventory of monitoring locations.
- Monitoring thousands of water quality data points during both wet and dry weather.
- Collecting information for up to 80 different data fields during each field visit.
- Managing permits which may prescribe different frequencies and approaches to monitoring.
- Mixed frequency monitoring which may require between 1 to 6 visits per year at each site.
- Maintaining an auditable chain of custody (COC) for documents and lab results.
Survey123 Solution
To address these challenges the district equipped field personnel with mobile devices that run Esri’s Survey123 for ArcGIS data collection app. This app guides employees through a customized data collection form with configured logic and standardized responses.
The app confirms sampling locations, reduces transcription errors, and streamlines the upload and import of data into the district’s KISTERS water quality data management system. The app also gives staff the option to attach images and videos.
Benefits
This solution streamlines field data collection workflows offering significant benefits in the following areas:
- Saves time compared to the previous manual validation process.
- Applies data validation and verification rules which automatically report errors and warn regulatory staff of issues which improves data quality.
- Provides comprehensive reports which increase the confidence that decision-makers have the highest quality information.
- Streamlines workflows which frees up personnel to attend to more pressing responsibilities.
References
“Fast Growing County Streamlines Flood Control in California.” SWAN Forum, 26 Dec. 2023, swan-forum.com/case-studies/riverside-county-kisters-case-study/.