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Power BI for Enviro’s (Oct 2020): Live Sensors, Geological Borelogs, & COVID-19 Water Security Risk Index

Christian Borovac
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In October 2020, Alice and I started running the monthly "Power BI and Data Analytics for Enviros" meetup group, to share tips, tricks and hacks for analysing, visualising and communicating environmental data. The group is focused on building a culture and excitement around how we can visualise environmental data to help monitor and manage our environmental systems and challenges. The sessions are focused on Sharing case studies, Learning new tips & tricks and Empowering other enviros on their Power BI and data analytics journey.

During National Water Week, we held our virtual launch event on 22 October 2020, and were lucky to have 3 amazing sessions and an Ask the Experts open panel discussion. This blog links the Meetup group with YouTube channel recording, and summarises the key takeways from each of the presenters. You can watch the entire recording in the video above, or skip ahead to the sections of interest to you by clicking on the individual videos below.

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Power BI 101 and Environmental Applications

Christian Borovac & Alice Drummond (DiscoverEI)

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When you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll quickly realise that Power BI is a pretty complex tool! Alice and Christian started off by giving a quick Power BI 101, and sharing a couple of demo’s of how the DiscoverEI team use Power BI for analysing and visualising environmental data. The key takeaways from this section are:

  • An intro into the key components of Power BI

  • A quick tour of the Power BI Online Service and App

  • A demo of a interactive water balance report, and showing just how quick and easy it can be to bring in new modelling scenarios and create new visuals using the Q&A visual

  • With a bit more time (and DAX skills), we can built out ‘Decision Support Tools’ using ‘What If’ parameters to perform water balance calculations on the fly for different climate change and population growth scenarios.

  • Cross-Report Drill-through allows us to create linkages between different reports in the Power BI Service, and pass the filter parameters, like the team did to link the Water Balance and Groundwater Quality reports together.

  • Environmental data sometimes required pretty specific visuals… and that’s where Custom Visuals come in handy. The team demonstrated how we could build interactive geological bore logs and cross-sections on the fly using our Geological Bore Log Power BI Custom Visual.

What exactly is Microsoft Power BI?

A Water Balance and Groundwater Quality Power BI report case study

Power BI for Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD)

Jarrod Gaut (Water_Insites)

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Jarrod Gaut from Water_Insites presented his case study on Power BI for Water Sensitive Urban Design on a project he worked on with the City of Greater Geelong. The key takeaways from his presentation are:

  • Power BI can be used to provide a simple and consistent real-time web interface to display time-series data from WSUD monitoring projects. Power BI can import data from sensors via the Web connection in Power Query (connecting via an API).

  • This project included several different sensor products set-up across 5 sites, and each sensor upload and stored the raw data in a variety of formats

  • The advantage of using Power BI was that it is a low-code solution capable of collating this data and performing powerful analysis and internal calculations to build the interactive dashboard.

  • The demo page for the Power BI report can be viewed and interacted with here.

COVID-19 Water Security Risk Index Dashboard

Lachlan Guthrie (International WaterCentre)

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In this part of the video, Lachlan Guthrie from the International WaterCentre presented the COVID-19 Water Security Risk Index Power BI Dashboard, which was developed in collaboration with the Australian Water Partnership, Griffith University and DiscoverEI. The key takeaways from this section are:

  • Power BI can be used as a powerful Storytelling tool to harness and communicate largely qualitative datasets.

  • Public dashboards require extra considerations towards meeting accessibility guidelines, accounting for browser compatibility and colour blindness.

  • The demo page for the Power BI dashboard can be viewed and interacted with here, and a link to the article is below.

Ask the Experts Panel Discussion

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We had some great chat and questions asked on the call during the “Ask the Experts” session. The DiscoverEI team including Principal Data Analyst Daniel Marsh-Patrick were assisted by other experts on the call, to answer a range of questions including what are some of the best learning resources for Power BI. Here is a list of some recommended resources that were made:

DAX and Data Modelling

Report Design & Visualisation

  • DiscoverEI: https://www.discoverei.com/blog: We love combining Power BI with graphic design and sharing these tips & tricks with the community.

  • PowerBI.Tips: https://powerbi.tips/: Run by Mike and Seth out of Milwaukee, PowerBI.Tips has all your design ideas covered from theme generators, to scrim backgrounds

  • Reid Havens: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjlfQwqb-0S40XQ8seYPLSw: Releases a weekly blog focused on simple but super effective design and data storytelling tips - highly recommend subscribing to the Havens Consulting YouTube page.

  • BiDezine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwfIR1yeBCmNSP0soX4Hb_g: Part of the Microsoft Power BI CAT team and the genius behind the Gartner Bake-Off Power BI report design. Miguel’s reports inspire others!

  • Alluring Analytics: https://alluringbi.com/: Like Miguel, Chris Hamill is also part of the Microsoft Power BI CAT team and has fantastic blogs on designing your reports.

  • Kratos BI: https://www.kratosbi.com/: The chief Data God himself Chris Wagner, never stops providing entertaining and educational video blog material on Power BI, including governance considerations and building a data culture. Buy the man a coffee and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

General Power BI

Thanks to Matt Burr, Greg Nash, Sam Fischer and Vi Murugesan for providing some of your recommended learning resources too!

Meetup Event #2

17 November 2020 (12:00 - 1:30 pm AEDT)

If you enjoyed this recording and our launch event, then Register Today to join us next time as we present more real-world Power BI examples from across the water and environmental industry.

We will have the following sessions coming to you from Queensland, Western Australia and the Waikato region in New Zealand:

  • Indigenous led AI in Kakadu National Park: Justin Perry (CSIRO, Queensland) will talk to us about how the CSIRO team are integrating Azure cognitive services with Power BI to support adaptive weed management in the Kakadu National Park.

  • Water Accounting, Monitoring and QA Checks with Power BI: Douglas De Brito (Waikato Regional Council, New Zealand) will share several case studies of how he's applying Power BI to streamline water management, including: Water Accounting; Monitoring Low Flow Conditions and Hydrological Field Inspections

  • Power BI Applications in the Water Industry: Phil Meng (Water Corporation, Western Australia) will be sharing some case studies from their work at the Water Corporation in Western Australia.

  • Networking, Q&A and "Ask the Enviro Experts panel"

Power BI Training Courses

If you’re interested in learning from our team, then we have a range of 2-day Power BI training courses available to fast-track your Power BI journey.

Click on the links below to learn more, and get in touch with the team today!

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