My name is Tudor Barrescu and my presentation will cover the main points of building a wastewater utilities management solution around the QGIS platform.

Would love some questions along the presentation so if anybody wants to interrupt me please do so along the presentation. Okay, because I only tried to cover the main points because I've been working like 10 years so there's lots of stuff and due to time constraints I couldn't fit them all in.

About me, so I'm a mechanical engineer, never practiced, ended up in the GIS office of Apaville. It's a wastewater operator for Vilcea County in Romania so we have like 300 kilometers over of drinkable water pipes and many kilometers

and many customers so we're quite big, not as big as others but big enough so that we see a lot of things. Also since 2014 I have my own business promoting QGIS and especially for public utilities and even more special for the water waste water sector.

We're doing QGIS contributions meaning everything from documentation, testing, bug reporting, code sponsoring, promoting anything that we can do translating so we're all in let's say. Yeah, always your charter member, surveying technician, when I ended up at the company for two or three years I did a lot of field let's

say with GPS and total stations and for me from my point of view it's an asset because I know how the field guy is doing so when he comes to the office I know what it should be done and everything so I can cover the whole stuff, the whole workflow.

So I'm also president of the small QGIS Romania user group so we just made it so the next hackfest will be in Romania in Bucharest for the Phospho-G 2009 so please come.

Yes, I also have some Autodesk and SRE experience, very good for migrating, that's an asset. Okay, if you see this I put this image so basically but it's not saying that well.

What I'm interested more in the QGIS platform is QGIS as the platform web clients, server, desktop, QWAT and QGAP which are, we'll get to that. So situation in Romania for water wastewater companies, so we had funds to build every company that is

providing public utilities services must have a GIS department and in 2006-2007 everybody had to build one.

So that's how the GIS departments in the water companies at least started and that's how it was my first job. Unfortunately all our brand systems or were and all lacking good deployments because somehow people think that if they buy the most expensive, I

don't know, SRE stuff or Autodesk or Geomedia that's all they need to do to have a good deployment which is really really false. Yeah, this is a cyclic problem, I mean there were some two or three rounds of funding so but

let's say somebody had an SRE deployment and then after five, six years another consultant came, okay, you know, we do it better in Geomedia and they switched like after five, six years and start from scratch and nothing happens.

So in 2012 I realized we are trapped chasing our own tails so I was thinking, okay, how to do this. I was tired of managing licenses, working with files, USB sticks.

Yeah, I already liked open sources, I had started using PostgreSQL first on Windows then on Linux and I started to get more and more confident. At that time I was studying what solutions to what should I go and I looked at QGIS, JVC, OpenJump, MapServer, GeoServer and whatnot to see if they fit the bill.

But one thing that I really wanted is to, of course I wanted web services but as we were quite few in the office I didn't want to all my desktop cartography to really reproduce it and stay another year only on the web to reproduce it fully.

So I wanted what you see is what you get. So the only platform that fit that bill was QGIS. So, yeah, but I started writing to companies that in Romania I couldn't find any good support, open

source company so I mean they must have been, they should have been better than me to accept them. So I started writing, I don't know, to several companies and Oslandia responded but either how I needed support, I realized that I needed support to accelerate things.

So, of course, not this kind of support, I didn't want this kind of support where I just sit and everybody do the work. I wanted this kind of support because open source is a social system and I wanted to work together in a thriving ecosystem whether if that meant joining an existing one or investing in creating a new one.

We managed to contract Oslandia to help us get started. Sometimes I say we but actually it was actually just myself pushing towards open source.

The company even tried to oppose it as they were afraid of the consequences of buying open source software. Yeah, because many think only licenses and a little bit of training is all there is to deployment. Yeah, and of course all other companies were invested heavily in proprietary software so it's hard to swim against the flow, let's say.

Okay, yeah, so it works. We're in production for many years. The system is improving constantly. Others have followed so I implemented to others for other companies in Romania so we're starting to get momentum.

Hopefully I'll get them all. Yeah. Okay, what works? What do we have? So the core platform is QGIS platform and PostGIS.

So we have database models based on QWAT and QGEP. QWAT is for drinkable water and QGEP is for wastewater. I won't talk that much because you can find many presentations on the internet so that's not the purpose here.

I'm just going to go like a timeline or something. Yeah, but what do we have? So we have database models, we have customized forms and specific tools. It's internationalized, English, French, Romanian. I think QGEP also has German. Okay, we have network topology specific to water and wastewater.

Networks with specific audience. Okay, we actually sponsored this integration. I think we achieved critical mass meaning that the projects go on by themselves and you push a boulder down the hill and then you get whoa.

It's nice. It rolls by itself. Yeah, so there are enough contributors and backers for a bright future which is fine. This is how it looks for a form, a customized form. This is for QWAT for the water port.

So one thing that I like about the project is about QWAT and QGEP is that they are contributing directly to QGEP for so many widgets that you now have in QGEP platform are sponsored by these projects. So really nice that it's going like this.

Okay, this is an image. It doesn't look that much on this projector, but yeah, it's quite good. Five minutes. Five minutes? Oh my god.

Yeah, so this is to show some specific tools for generating slope profile. And okay, you can do downstream, upstream for the wastewater network tracing.

This is the QGEP web client, the old one that we also contributed to and it's really nice because all the layouts from the desktop go into the web. So it's a really cool feature, although it's new, therefore everybody has to know that these are really cool features. This is the new web client 2, QGEP web client 2 that we are also contributing to.

And this is also a surface profile. You can just make it unbound. We have a digital model, elevation model behind the scenes and it all works.

It's only directly in QGEP web client 2. We also use the intermux ROM, so we have windows, tablets and go on the feed and get the data and push them back. It's a long story a lot of trying to go fast. Since it's about a year now, we are using Grafana R reporting.

So Grafana allows the quality to several data sources, among which SQL databases and using our already presented SQL skills. You can present, we can present metrics reports when you watch our network data with or without site components.

So you can connect to your telemetry systems, ERP and so on. So it looks like this. This is how the graphics photo, it doesn't look that much, at least from this position. I think this is really ugly data. It's really pretty.

Yeah, okay. Basically, it allows the operation and configuration of control panels that contain Graf. These are the heat maps. You can share them, whatever. So this is another one that we use to get the pressure from the telemetry data.

Or you can set an alert in case it's more than, I don't know, five bars. Send alert. Okay, this shouldn't happen, whatever. It's integrated with QGIS web clients too. So this is from a get feature info in QGIS web client too. And you can see that we have the Grafana graph there.

And of course, it's integrated with QGIS. You can have the integrated document viewer, which is quite nicely used like this in a form in QGIS. So no coding required. Just put their HTML in the booth. It works quite nicely. Healthy principles. Don't reinvent the wheel. Stay within and promote your communities.

Oh, yes, who? Say no to your really bad. Say no to the not intended here syndrome. Everybody is some other water companies are trying every time to do by themselves. But you cannot have integrated systems and work by yourself.

It's impossible. Because you have so many things, variables coming in. Yeah, I'm going to pass the hardware because it's been a long time. Yeah, and you have some pretty pictures. Yeah, of on the field in the office. This is with the international on the tablets.

Yeah, nice from some developer meeting like this one was that we meet. I'm going to skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. So that's maybe we're very happy. But we still have many to do. So I would love some questions in the one minute and a half or one minute left.

Maybe they can extend some. Yeah. Clear. Yeah, you can also find me afterwards. So if you want to talk about wastewater systems.

I would love to. Sorry. Yeah. Is there any standard for sewage for like the metal of the sewage system?

Or the what? Like the metal. I mean, what to do? What is the data model when you register and do you do any material for sewage system? I don't understand what system? I think I understand the wastewater. The wastewater.

You register the diameter, the material. Is there that model? What are you? I mean like if the amount of data you register from the field is because you define it or you are following some. So if I got this question right.

Yep, it's based on the standards. I don't know the name. I don't know exactly the name. It's a Swiss standard and in Romania if we don't have it. Yeah. I just got the Swiss standard and in Romania it's a really, really good. I mean I think there's so many.

It's really good to implement it. So many options you can stay like three months only standing in the standard because it has so many options. Like stay three months for translating only the data model because it had so many options. So it's quite nice. For the drinkable water there's no standard.

So we hope that QWATS in time will become. Because there are some, I don't know, five, six, seven, ten companies that are working on it. So our common needs decide what the data model looks like. So it's kind of a standard at least between us. So we have the versioning control and stuff like that.

You can check it out. So QWATS, QGs, QWATS, you can check it out. I hope I answered the question right if I got it right. Yes. The sound is really nice in this hall so we can talk about it.

I got a question about let's say business issue. Who is financing your job with Ocelania and other open source companies? So at first we pushed it and we never paid since that time.

I simply worked on it because let's say my company is paying for it. I'm still at that job because I love water, wastewater systems. I could have resigned but I think I do a better job from inside. My company doesn't bother me. I mean I can do whatever I want which is, yeah.

And afterwards, so QJET and QWATS have become non-protective associations. And now there are many companies that are financing that. So I pushed the wheel, let's say, and now the wheel is getting income from other companies.

And I can just stick around, push the little bit. And you're implementing new features, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I get the new features for free. I mean QWATS technical team which is nice, yeah. Richard, do you want something else to add? Yeah, yes.

In fact, QWATS is funded by four municipalities in Switzerland. You have Lausanne, Puye, both municipalities are doing things.

So they have their own budget. It's about 100,000 euros per year. It's a good budget. And the QJET part, it's a Q2 user group in Switzerland subgroup where each municipality that wants to jump in has two Swiss friends, I guess.

So they have a small budget with that and then some people pay for new features. But it works, the main part is that it works. And the nicest part is that there are quite a few co-developers involved in this, yeah.

Yeah, I know it works now for QWATS, but I was wondering about how you financed it because we have the same problem in Poland that everybody now has the money for this

and they are rethinking the wheel as you mentioned before. And I will ask you later about how it was here because it's very interesting. Yeah, so from my point of view I just wrote the tender book as it was supposed to be written.

So I didn't write the consultants because in Romania, but I think in Poland also, there are only big consultants and some of them do the tender books and some other friends of them get the actual, and then they switch to another company and it's a deal before and you cannot do anything about it.

It's a copy-place situation. Yeah, so it's also important. I hope you would like to introduce it in Poland as well. Yeah, for you. We'll be in touch. Any questions? I don't know if there's any time. I think not.

Thanks for the University and thanks for everybody involved in QGIS and in this nice environment community. Thank you again. Bye bye.