A new, cut­ting-edge Op­er­a­tional Con­trol Cen­tre (OCC) for the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty will be ful­ly com­mis­sioned on Wednes­day, Ju­ly 10.  The Cen­tre was ini­ti­at­ed in April 2023, and was com­plet­ed on time and be­low bud­get by May 2024.

“This mile­stone un­der­scores the Au­thor­i­ty's com­mit­ment to lever­ag­ing ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy for im­proved wa­ter and waste­water man­age­ment,” the State en­ti­ty said in a news re­lease, de­scrib­ing it as a “piv­otal de­vel­op­ment” and “sig­nif­i­cant leap for­ward”.

WASA ex­plains that de­vel­op­ment and com­ple­tion of the OCC—lo­cat­ed at WASA’s Head Of­fice in St. Joseph—were made pos­si­ble through fund­ing from the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) via the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT).

The OCC emerged out of a man­date is­sued by the Cab­i­net in 2022, that the Au­thor­i­ty de­vel­op a strate­gic Ac­tion Plan aligned with the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals and the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy 2026-2030 (Vi­sion 2030).

Ac­cord­ing to the WASA state­ment, the 2,500-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty, “of­fers a glimpse in­to the fu­ture of wa­ter and waste­water man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

This image released by the Water and Sewerage Authority shows its new Operational Control Centre (OCC) located at its head office in St Joseph. The facility will be fully commissioned on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. [Image courtesy WASA]

It is equipped with state-of-the-art tech­nol­o­gy—in­clud­ing video walls and a cen­tral­ized plat­form for 24-hour mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of SCA­DA Sys­tems, Ge­o­graph­ic In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems (GIS), and tele­met­ric de­vices—there­by en­hanc­ing ex­ec­u­tive, tac­ti­cal, strate­gic, and op­er­a­tional over­sight.

“In ad­di­tion to im­prov­ing mon­i­tor­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties, the OCC au­to­mates the man­age­ment of sev­er­al man­u­al process­es such as leak re­pair and wa­ter truck­ing, there­by in­creas­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy,” WASA says.

“The OCC’s ad­vanced serv­er room, equipped with back­up pow­er sup­ply, en­sures con­tin­u­ous da­ta col­lec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing, en­abling a proac­tive ap­proach through re­al-time da­ta flow and im­proved op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy,” the Au­thor­i­ty notes. “This dy­nam­ic space al­lows the Au­thor­i­ty to re­mote­ly man­age and mon­i­tor op­er­a­tions across its ex­ten­sive net­work of wa­ter and waste­water fa­cil­i­ties.”

WASA as­sures that se­cu­ri­ty and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is­sues have been fac­tored in­to the new OCC’s de­sign and op­er­abil­i­ty met­rics, not­ing that it fea­tures ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing en­cryp­tion, two-fac­tor au­then­ti­ca­tion, and bio­met­ric ac­cess con­trol. In ad­di­tion, sur­veil­lance cam­eras with an­a­lyt­ic ca­pa­bil­i­ties pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for the fa­cil­i­ty and its per­son­nel.

WASA says fu­ture projects “will con­tin­ue to dri­ve dig­i­ti­za­tion and au­toma­tion of wa­ter and waste­water ser­vices, sup­port­ed by an­tic­i­pat­ed fund­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic stake­hold­ers.”