Optimal planning for wastewater disposal facilities: Application of geographic information system and data analytics

This paper introduces a novel data-driven procedure to forecast Marcellus wastewater production and optimize the location and capacity of the disposal facilities. We propose a three-step data analysis procedure: data integration, predictive modeling, and facility planning. In the first step, we collected, processed, and cleaned data from regulatory agencies and public domains. This step delivered an integrated database of oil and gas production, also wastewater volume, origin, and transportation data. In the second step, we used predictive modeling tools, such as decline curve, correlation, regression, and spatial analyses, to forecast wastewater production on a well-by-well basis. In the third step, we used the predicted wastewater volumes to evaluate future regional disposal requirements and applied road network analysis to compute trucking distances and estimate optimal disposal facility size and locations.