We’re excited to share that BlueConduit was recently featured in InvestigateTV for our work in using predictive modeling to locate and replace lead service lines across the U.S. Below is a snippet from the article. Read the full post here.
Futuristic solutions to a century-old problem
Despite the numerous challenges surrounding lead service line replacements, there may be a futuristic solution to the century-old problem of faulty record-keeping.
To address the shortcomings of the past, BlueConduit, a water analytics company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is leveraging modern technology to help locate lead pipes and discover the unknowns.
Eric Schwartz, co-founder of BlueConduit, explained that the company uses predictive modeling analytics to identify where to dig for lead service lines in Flint, providing valuable insights to local decision-makers and accelerating the removal process.
Flint garnered national attention in 2014 after corroded pipes poisoned city residents.
“We started using data science machine learning to predict address by address where the lead was,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz believes that machine learning, or AI, is the key to helping communities tackle their lead inventory challenges. Blue Conduit is currently working with more than 350 cities, towns, and communities across the country to help complete their lead service line inventories.
The technology also helps reduce labor and costs for water departments while pinpointing areas with higher concentrations of lead to help make the process easier.
“When we look at other service lines, where we know all of those pieces of information, except the material, we can then make a prediction of best guess…what’s the likelihood that this address has a lead pipe,” Schwartz said.
