Grantee Research Project Results
Unearthing Lead Service Lines: An Operational Geospatial Data Platform
EPA Contract Number: 68HERC22C0006Title: Unearthing Lead Service Lines: An Operational Geospatial Data Platform
Investigators: Hecht, David
Small Business: Unearth Technologies Inc
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022
Project Amount: $100,000
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I (2022) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) , SBIR - Water
Description:
An estimated 6.1 to 10 million Lead Service Lines (LSLs) in the United States will require upwards of $47.0 billion to replace given existing methods. With the high costs and data challenges associated with LSL identification, and the multi-decade replacement backlog, the EPA is seeking innovative technologies to increase operational efficiency of LSLR programs and enable data-driven prioritization of high-risk communities to better protect public health.Unearth Technologies has developed the “OnePlace” Geospatial Work Management Platform which is currently used at some of t he nation’s largest Utilities to map and inspect underground infrastructure and has achieved an average 31% reduction in project costs, and 37% acceleration in completion timelines. It is a proven, field-first,bring-your-own-device (BYOD) cloud solution that is rapidly deployable and secure. This project seeks to investigate LSLR Program data challenges at five public water systems to better inform development of innovative algorithms and collection methods to automate the identification, processing, cleanup,and standardization of variety of bulk structured & unstructured LSL data, making it available and actionable for LSLR Programs within the “OnePlace” Platform. Operational efficiency improvements start with data integrity and availability, requiring innovative data algorithms and methods to automatically collect, digitize, and operationalize data. The OnePlace Platform is designed to be data, hardware and IT ecosystem agnostic, promoting data interoperability and flexibility; Competing technologies have foundational architectural limitations requiring specific data formats and structures, making outside data sources complex and expensive to operationalize. Equally critical to efficiency improvements is field adoption of new technology. Competing technologies weren’t designed as field-first applications, which is why we built a field-first consumer-grade UI with a geospatialbackbone to support field adoption.
Progress and Final Reports:
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.