Browsing by Author "FIGUEIREDO, JOANA RODRIGUES"
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- From relational waters to intelligent oceans: A lakehouse-centric approach to conversational artificial intelligencePublication . FIGUEIREDO, JOANA RODRIGUES; Gomes, Luís Filipe de Oliveiraof handling large volumes of heterogeneous and unstructured data while enabling real-time intelligent decision-making. In the water management domain, where legacy systems and operational complexity often obstruct innovation, there is an increasing need to adopt artificial intelligencepowered solutions that promote efficiency, traceability, and accessibility. Responding to this challenge, this dissertation presents CLARA — a Conversational Lakehouse Architecture supported by Real-time Artificial intelligence. CLARA is a modular solution that integrates modern data infrastructures, artificial intelligence models, and natural language interaction to support intelligent management in water utility operations. CLARA was conceived and developed from scratch, following the data lakehouse paradigm to consolidate structured and unstructured data, such as field images. The infrastructure adopts a medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) and includes pipelines for ingestion, loading, and transformation. Particular attention was given to documentation of transformations, and integration of flows for experiment tracking, enabling a robust foundation for artificial intelligence development and data governance. The solution currently features two artificial intelligence models that demonstrate how the lakehouse paradigm can support intelligent reasoning beyond conventional structured data processing. The first is an optical character recognition model, which enables the automated interpretation of water meter readings directly from field images, a type of unstructured data typically excluded from traditional storage systems. This model exemplifies how AI can be embedded into the data architecture to support validation and data quality assurance workflows. The second is a predictive model based on neural networks, designed to anticipate the symptom of the next operational intervention by analyzing historical maintenance sequences. Together, these models illustrate the potential of unifying data storage and artificial intelligence reasoning within a single environment. At the user interaction layer, a custom-built conversational assistant leverages a cascade of large language models to classify and respond to user queries in real-time. The system routes each input to one of four specialized modules: (1) to access structure data in real-time, (2) to execute and access artificial intelligence models, (3) to consult software support manuals, and (4) to provide fallback conversational support only on water-related topics. The assistant also integrates multilingual support and a semantic permission-verification mechanism that maps the user’s intent and role to the structure of the underlying database, preventing unauthorized actions. Developed in partnership with A2O – Água, Ambiente e Organização, Lda., and validated through four real-world case studies, CLARA demonstrated how a carefully orchestrated artificial intelligence pipeline, backed by an efficient data infrastructure, can modernize and improve decision-making, enhance transparency, and simplify access to complex systems through natural language.