california-data-collaborative/billcalculator

Easily estimate a water bill across any part of California with OWRS compliant water rate data specified. OWRS bill calculator refactoring tool of same name from MNWD.

BillCalculator

Easily estimate a water bill across any part of California with OWRS compliant water rate data specified. OWRS bill calculator refactoring tool of same name from MNWD.

Winter Internship Goals

Develop a bill calculator leveraging Open Water Rate Specification (OWRS) data. This tool would allow users to put in their address and water use for a given month and see the estimated bill for that month. Extensions include comparing that to other water utilities.

The MNWD_BillCalculator folder contains code from one specific utility. The goal of this winter sprint is to refactor and generalize that utility-specific code for use with any OWRS file from any local water retailer. A preliminary timeline for the project is shown below:

Original Timeline	Deliverable
12/22/17	Kickoff meeting
...	...
1/19/18	Launch!

ARGO team lead: Christopher Tull ( [email protected] )

Progress to Date

RateParser was incorporated in the bill calculator tool. Selection element was added for users to specify their water district. Based on the selected district, the most recent OWRS information will be retrieved. The tool will calculate commodity charge, total bill, water use and charges in each tier shown in plots and table. Bill calculator is built compatible with different rate structures.

Resources

General background information on water rate design here. Especially pages 24+

Information on the Open Water Rate Specification (OWRS) is here.

There are lots of R Shiny tutorials here.

billcalculator's Issues

Lightweight AWS calculator

I thought this was an elegant and lightweight implementation that could be repurposed for this project.

http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/

Allow user to select water agency

After the app is calculating rates using RateParser (#2) we will want the user to be able to select the water agency corresponding to where they live. As a first pass this should be a dropdown or autocomplete field to type in the name of a water district directly. We can then get the most recent rate information for that district and calculate the bill.

• Add selection element for user to specify district
• Capture chosen district information and retrieve most recent OWRS information for this district
• Calculate water bill using the OWRS file for the specified district (This might include altering other available inputs?)

Update readme with progress to date

@fangshulin could you please update the readme with the latest describing the code and functionality you've developed?

Drop down for user to select water agency (in addition to address)

Would be useful to have a simple dropdown for users to select their water district in the bill calculator tool in addition to the address box. Not mission critical though makes the bill calculator tool more useful for water managers looking to see a given districts rates and makes the bill calculator a more interactive replacement for the appendix listing water rates from the 2015 survey. CC @christophertull

https://demo.californiadatacollaborative.com/BillCalculator/BillCalculator_RateParser_AddressInput/

Preparing the repo for CUSP interns

@christophertull I added some detail to this repo to prep for the students. Could you please dig into this project a bit and spec out some tasks and milestones?

For context, Winter break will run from 12/22 to 1/23.

Modify MNWD bill calculator to use OWRS file for MNWD

The functioning MNWD bill calculator can be seen here: https://sparkle.mnwd.com/BillCalculator%20Extension/Current/

One of the first goals should be to get that code running internally but we should swap out the "guts" of the app that actually calculate the water bill with RateParser.

Ideally we can then use the OWRS file for MNWD and replicate the current functioning of the app but with our code doing the rate calculations behind the scenes.

TODO:

• Update this repo with MNWD app code
• Get app running with RateParser

Address lookup to identify water agency that serves user

While #3 will enable users to specify their water district to see their rates, ideally users will not need to know what water district serves them. Users should be able to enter their address and we will geocode this address, map it to a water district, and then calculate the rates.

• Add UI element to input address
• Geocode address to get lat/lons
• Map lat/lon to water district. We might needs a separate web service to enable this.

Agencies where bill calculator isn't working

Running list.

1. Coachella Valley water district (prospective CaDC member). Note they have two OWRS files: https://github.com/California-Data-Collaborative/Open-Water-Rate-Specification/tree/master/full_utility_rates/California/Coachella%20Valley%20Water%20District%20-%20661

Address autocomplete

Nice extension of #4 would be to figure out if we can use incorporate the Google Places javascript API into the app to enable address autocomplete. Helps improve usability and standardize addresses for geocoding.

Deploy custom bill calc for Santa Monica

Purpose:

1. See how long it takes to do a custom deployment.
2. Useful marketing tool as SMC's data is open and serves as our sandbox

CC @christophertull