Chapter 12 Case Study

This case puts forth the idea that IT can be used for real time monitoring and service

management. South Bend, Indiana was having issues with its sewer system, in which it would

frequently get clogged and would cause many overflows per year. It cost a great deal of money

and required an efficient way to solve this problem, as workers could not monitor the system all

the time. Sensors were therefore installed into the sewer system, and would send data into a

database so that analytical software could judge the performance of the sewer system. It was set

up like a GPS-like map with color codes in order to quickly identify potential problems, and

allowed for tabs to be kept on the sewer system. What was discovered, was that different pipes

had different capacity, so pipes with smaller capacities would overflow during heavy rainfall.

This information allowed for technicians to reroute the sewer system during heavy rainfall to

pipes that had great capacity. The IT solution turned out to be much cheaper than traditional

repairs, and resulted in dramatic reduction in overflows. It also was able to help in other ways,

such as in manganese and iron build up, or locations of abandoned or foreclosed homes reported

to the police, or prediction of sidewalk temperatures to regulate purchases of de-icing materials.

This shows Business intelligence (BI), which uses data analysis in order to make better

decisions. IT allowed for Business intelligence, which the area could provide the highest level of

benefits for the least amount of cost. BI allows for different systems, that span from deciding on

data analysis, to data formatting, and all of this is facilitated and aided in implementation by IT.

IT allows for solutions that maximize solutions with smaller costs, that could also offer

additional benefits, such as in the case of South Bend, Indiana.