Situation
NI Water needs to provide accurate responses to 1000s of planning applications received from 11 Councils and DfI Planning with a short statutory turnaround time. The use of standalone offline spreadsheets with no geographical representation has been far from ideal.
Action
The new 'Planning Decision Support Tool' will support colleagues from AD’s Strategic Investment Planners and C&OD’s Infrastructure Planners in providing responses to DfI/Local Council Planning Services on planning applications, ranging from single domestic units to large-scale commercial or regionally significant applications.
Information assessed by the teams includes downstream Wastewater Treatment Works capacity, sewer network capacity, Unsatisfactory Intermittent Discharges (UIDs), DG5 Sewer Flooding Incidents and the presence of Odour Zone boundaries, Pre-Development Enquiries and Impact assessments in the area. Collectively, these datasets provide a picture of the condition of the wastewater network in the area to assess the feasibility of allowing new connections and development to take place that will ensure no degradation to the environment from assets spilling to watercourses.
The solution is well developed with the UID and DG5 External Flooding Registers being transformed from offline spreadsheets into NI Water’s corporate spatial database, including applications developed for data maintenance by thedata owners and display of live data in the GIS. Further work is to be progressed on transforming the WwTW Capacity spreadsheet and PC21 Programme (to determine when development may be likely) into the corporate spatial database in the same way.
Results
The DSS, once fully completed, will enable NI Water planners to manage the issue of wastewater capacity constraints using a single tool populated with the most up to date information when responding to planning applications and pre-development enquiries.