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ORLANDO, Fla. (Dec. 7, 2010) EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group (EPIC), an Orlando based information technology firm, has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is to develop a location based Infrastructure Intelligence System using the Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model for small and medium water and wastewater utilities.
Dr. Prasad Chittaluru, principal of EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group said efficient management of aging infrastructure is of critical importance for water/wastewater utilities and other infrastructure agencies that protect public health and safety.
“The nation’s water and sewer infrastructure deficiencies threaten the safety and welfare of the public as well as economic growth and competitiveness,” said Dr. Chittaluru.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates there are over 240,000 water main breaks and 170,000 sewer main breaks annually in the United States. Estimates for fixing the nation’s infrastructure run into hundreds of billions of dollars.
Dr. Chittaluru said utilities must analyze diverse datasets to efficiently prioritize infrastructure maintenance. These datasets include hydraulic models, geographic information systems, control and acquisition systems, maintenance, emergency response and project documents.
EPIC’s system (code named Neptune) will assist the utilities in efficiently managing their infrastructure by making all the relevant information accessible through a centralized web-based interface, Dr. Chittaluru explained.
“Neptune will be offered at a considerably lower price point than other solutions currently available. The lower cost, ease of use and the fact that it will overlay all of a utility’s current information systems to provide integrated information, will make it much more affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized utilities,” said Dr. Chittaluru.
Neptune has the potential to provide significant societal benefit by reducing infrastructure failures and guiding utilities towards proactive infrastructure maintenance practices.
EPIC is a client company of the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program in the Central Florida Research Park in East Orange County.
For more information about this release contact:
Dr. Prasad Chittaluru, PE, BCEE, GISP, Principal, EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group; 407-415-6522; Prasad@epicgroupllc.com
Carol Ann Dykes, UCF Business Incubator Site Manager, 407-882-0211, cdykes@mail.ucf.edu
Larry Vershel or Beth Payan, Larry Vershel Communications, 407-644-4142; lvershelco@aol.com
About EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group, LLC:
EPIC Engineering & Consulting Group, LLC (EPIC) is a Central Florida-based engineering and IT solutions provider. EPIC simplifies their clients' operations by streamlining business processes, eliminating redundancies in data capture, analysis and retrieval, and assisting them in transforming their business information into actionable intelligence resulting in saving time and money. They apply their decades of experience in business process optimization and enterprise software applications development to designing and implementing powerful yet simple to use solutions for the public and private sector organizations, human services agencies and utilities. For more information visit www.epicgroupllc.com.
About the UCF Incubator Program:
Since its founding in 1999, the UCF Business Incubation Program has helped more than 140 emerging companies (including 90 current clients) create over $800 million in annual revenue and more than 1600 new jobs with an average salary of $59,000. With eight facilities across the Greater Orlando community, the Incubation Program is a collaboration in economic development between the University of Central Florida, Orange County, The City of Orlando, Seminole County, the City of Winter Springs, The City of Sanford, Lake County, The City of Leesburg, Osceola County, The City of Kissimmee, City of St. Cloud and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. For more information, please visit www.incubator.ucf.edu. |
