Techniques to Avoid and Decode Weird Looking Flow Monitoring Data

Abstract
Collection system flow monitoring programs have become key components in the asset management programs of many local utilities. These programs provide not only information about the volume, peak and temporal variation of flow conveyed in collection systems under various hydrologic and hydraulic conditions, but also valuable information to engineers about the performance and capacity of their systems. However, the effectiveness of these programs in providing this information depends on collecting accurate flow monitoring data from the systems, which is often not easy to do for various site specific and hydraulic reasons.
As a result, the processes used for selecting appropriate flow monitoring locations and the methods used for analyzing the resulting data are very important. If flow monitoring locations are not selected appropriately or if the collected data are not analyzed systematically, there may be unwanted effects on impact flow volume, peak quantification and numerical model calibration efforts that utilize them. This may lead to the generation of erroneous results and render any resulting engineering effort futile.
For collection system monitoring, a common type of monitoring technology is area-velocity (A/V) meter. An A/V meter collects depth and velocity time series of flow at a monitoring location. These time series are used for generating flow time series for the monitoring location. This chapter describes procedures for selecting flow monitoring locations and analyzing flow monitoring time series obtained from this type of meter.
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