Ann Arbor Times

More than ten years after the Flint water crisis began, efforts continue to address aging water infrastructure and the health risks caused by lead contamination. In 2014, Flint changed its drinking water source from Detroit’s system to the Flint River, a move that led to improperly treated water and widespread lead exposure among residents.

One of the main challenges in Flint and other cities is identifying where lead pipes are located. BlueConduit, a startup from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, has developed a machine learning approach to predict these locations more efficiently. Since its founding in 2016, BlueConduit has worked with over 100 customer accounts across more than 400 towns and cities in at least 25 states.

Eric Schwartz, associate professor of marketing at U-M and co-founder of BlueConduit, discussed the company’s origins and growth on a recent episode of Business & Society. He explained how BlueConduit began as an engaged research project: “At first, this was really just an engaged research project—engaged with a community, engaged with the local government,” Schwartz said. “We started realizing we can use this approach elsewhere, too. And that’s when we started getting inbound requests. ‘Hey, can you do that in our community?'”

BlueConduit uses historical records combined with pattern recognition and machine learning to predict where lead pipes are likely buried. These predictions inform dig sites for pipe replacement or verification; data collected during these digs further improves the accuracy of future predictions.

The Environmental Protection Agency cited research by Schwartz and his co-founder Jake Abernathy when it proposed updates to its lead and copper rule in 2020—the first changes since 1991—and continues to reference BlueConduit’s methods in guidance for other cities.

Schwartz emphasized his commitment to using data science for positive impact: “That’s been our goal from the beginning,” he said. “My co-founder and I have wanted to create not just impact, primarily in communities where these issues are happening, but also to create these opportunities for folks that want to do data for good.”

Looking ahead, Schwartz said he plans for BlueConduit to keep working on optimization problems facing public utilities and infrastructure sectors while helping organizations make better decisions about limited resources.

Both Schwartz and the University of Michigan hold financial interests in BlueConduit.

Business & Society is produced by JT Godfrey (Ross School of Business) and Jeff Karoub (Michigan News), with audio engineering by Jonah Brockman and editorial production from Mads Henke.