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Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Session: 1
Room: Exhibit Hall A
Fernando M. Hernandez Millet - Interamerican University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón
Co-Author(s): Jorge L. Herrera, Arecibo Observatory, PR
During summer 2017, Eng. Francisco Córdova (Director of the Arecibo Observatory) asked Eng. Felipe Soberal (previous engineering and maintenance director) and Eng. Jorge L. Herrera (Software Engineer at AO) to evaluate current As-Is workflow and to look for opportunities on how to improve data accessibility related to diesel consumption and correlate associated costs to particular research projects. The project seeks to facilitate the collection of data from the Arecibo Observatory’s electric generators, currently done manually, and transitioning it to electronic records. This transition will optimize the reporting workflow of diesel consumption by the generators, therefore improving the process of reporting funding stakeholders (NASA, NSF) and paid observation customers. As a solution, a web-based monitoring tool was developed to facilitate the visualization of the site’s generators in real time, as well as to provide historic records of the generator’s operations, mainly their diesel consumption. The tool allows the user to filter the data according to time range. The filtered data then generates a series of charts, the critical ones presenting the daily diesel consumption in a month per generator and the diesel consumption by every charging group or equipment according to time. The tool also features a record table which displays the summarized information of every generator reading. Each filter search contains an option to auto generate a formal report, optimizing the current reporting workflow and eliminating labor overhead. These reports can then be used by the AO’s administration to invoice accurately the funding stakeholders and paid observation customers. A version of the tool was recently deployed for the use of the AO staff and has reduced an approximate of 18 hours a month of labor overhead. It is expected that the tool will be able to use historical data from the power generators to provide the administration with diesel consumption trends associated with particular research projects. This information will be vital for the prediction of future cost trends and the business decision-making process.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I thank F. Córdova, J. Gago and L. Piñango for their help with the requirements elicitation. -I thank J. Herrera, A. Venkataraman and J. Iriarry at Yang Enterprises Inc for the IT support. -I also thank A. Díaz and A. Virkki for their research advice. -Funding was provided by an NSF/ REU grant to Ana G. Méndez University (UAGM) and the Arecibo Observatory.
Faculty Advisor: Jorge L. Herrera, jherrera@naic.edu
Role: I had the opportunity to work in almost every phase of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) of the Diesel Consumption Monitoring & Reporting Tool; including the Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing and Deployment phases. However, I focused in the Analysis, Design and Implementation phases, which were leveraged from work previously done by Jorge L. Herrera.
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