AMR Quarantine Processing

The AMR Quarantine Processing option enables the user to view information regarding AMRs that have been quarantined due to consumption exceeding the attached water meter’s possible throughput (negative consumption may also be included).

Search Parameters:

• Suburb: Filter report by suburb (optional).
• Scheme: Filter report by scheme (optional).
• DMA: A District Metered Area (optional).
  • Include child DMAs: Include/exclude sub DMAs.
• Sort Order: The order in which to sort the report.
• Inclusions: Include AMRs that meet the following requirements (optional).
  • Unprocessed quarantined records: Include AMRs that have not yet been processed.
  • Processed quarantined records: Include AMRs that have been previously processed.
• Quarantined Date From/To: Filter the report results by these dates (optional).
• Private Meters: Include, exclude or only show Private Meters (optional).
• Network Meters: Include, exclude or only show Network Meters (optional).

Once all the desired parameters have been entered, click the “Search” button. Once the report has been generated the following columns will be listed. To go back to the AMR Management Menu, click the “Back” button.

Result Columns:

• Scheme: The AMR/Meter scheme.
• Address: The address of the meter.
• AMR No: The AMR’s unique code.
• Tag Model: The model number of the AMR.
• Meter No: The meter code of the meter.
• Meter Model name: The model name of the meter.
• Meter Inlet Size: The inlet size of the meter.
• Date Quarantined: The date the AMR was placed into quarantine.

• Number of Reports Exceeding Threshold: The number of rows of data (pulses) received after the quarantine which also exceed the max threshold of litres/minute.

• Maximum Litres Per Minute: Lists the litres per minute consumed on the date when quarantined, as well as the past month’s maximum litres consumed per minute.
• Error name: The type of quarantine error.
• Quarantined Override Flag: Whether the AMR has previously been manually removed from quarantine.
• Last Report: Datetime that the most recent report was received.
• Reading Exception: Flag to indicate if the AMR also has a reading mismatch between the physical and calculated reading
• Process: Used to process a currently quarantined AMR.

How to “Process” a Quarantined AMR

Once an AMR has been marked as quarantined, it is necessary for the user to investigate further to identify the most likely cause. The first step in this process should be to click on the “Error Date” for the AMR which will link to the Water Usage Report around the date of the quarantine. By looking at the data in the report, an obvious error should stand out as a high data point, especially in contrast with other data points.

Example Quarantine

The easiest way to identify an abnormally high flow rate causing the quarantining of an AMR is to click on the “Error Date” value on the AMR Quarantine Processing report. This will take the user to the Water Usage Report chart, with the “Non-Summarised, Litres Per Minute” variant displayed, defaulting to 7 days before and after the highest point on the chart. Examples of these are shown as follows:

Example 1- Single Abnormal Reading.

Figure 1 – Example 1: Litres Per Minute

The above example shows an AMR with one single abnormal reading clearly visible as the high point on the chart. This can be contrasted with the chart shown in Figure 2 which is the same AMR but with the raw data displayed (Non-Summarised) where single error report has been obfuscated. The cause of this, which can be seen when putting the user’s mouse over the data points around the time of the error, was that a reading of 180L was received 3 minutes after a reading of 0 for the same AMR causing a high flow rate per minute.

Figure 2 - Example 1: Non Summarised

Historically, this type of error is caused by a data processing issue with data received from the AMR by the AMR data provider. The action to rectify this issue would be to make contact with the AMR data provider via email and ask them to investigate the data for the AMR (provide the AMR tag identifier) and ask to resend the data for that AMR for the 12 hours before and after the error. Once this data is supplied through the normal import process, this exception will be cleared.

Example 2- Single Abnormal Reading with Sudden Stop

Similar to the first example, in this case a single high reading has been received, followed by the immediate cessation of all data from the AMR. An example of this is shown in Figure 3. The cause of this error may be the same as the first example, but the sudden stop of data after a high usage report may point to a faulty AMR, in which case, a job should be raised to investigate the AMR and its installation on the meter and to verify the meter reading.

Figure 3 - Example 2

Example 3- Repeated or Constant Exceptions

As shown in the next image, in some cases a number repeated or constant exceptions are reported (usually over 80 litres per minute). In this case, a number of reports are received which are significantly higher than the threshold.

Figure 4 - Example 3

The resolution for this example may be both to contact the AMR data provider to investigate or to visit the property to inspect the meter. One possible cause for this error may be that the AMR is configured to have a higher rate per pulse value than it should, a setting defined against the AMR advice in MiWater.

Example 4- Negative Values

As shown in the next image the system will mark an AMR as quarantined when the data contains a large negative and positive pulse count in close proximity. The usual cause of this will be a processing issue on behalf of the AMR data provider where the timestamps of the reports are misreported, advancing a lower, older value to a later timestamp. Since MiWater processing compares each report with the report immediately before it (chronologically) a negative “delta” is recorded.

Figure 5 - Example 4

The resolution for this example is to contact the AMR data provider to investigate. The underlying cause of this error often affects more than one AMR. Once data has been corrected by the AMR data provider and resupplied through the normal process, all affected AMRs will be automatically corrected in MiWater without user intervention. Note also that for these errors, simply processing the error with “quarantine override” would ignore the error and have no material impact on the calculated meter reading after the exception.

Overriding Quarantine

If the values recorded against a meter are deemed correct (i.e. not in error) and is confirmed through a field reading, a quarantined AMR can be processed by clicking on the “Process Button” on the Quarantine Management form. This will display a modal dialogue asking the user to confirm the override and provide a description of the investigation that occurred that led to the override.