Turn water and fibre maps into service questions

Start with the cooling concept and the operating load.

Define IT demand, annual utilization, cooling technology and the conditions the design must tolerate. Keep evaporative cooling makeup, domestic use, fire protection and other process water separate. Annual volume does not establish the peak-day flow that a supplier must serve.

Atlas’s micro and small defaults use a dry-cooling scenario with no evaporative makeup in the model. The large default uses a hybrid water sensitivity. These are editable planning assumptions, not verified designs or guarantees of zero water use.

For illustration, 20 MW IT at an 85% load factor consumes 148,920,000 kWh/year at the IT level. A hypothetical range of 0.2–0.8 litres per IT kWh gives 29,784–119,136 m³/year. That arithmetic is a sensitivity test, not a prediction for the site. A cooling designer must establish the appropriate annual and peak-day requirements.

Give each water source a defined role.

Municipal water and sewer layers

Use published assets to identify the relevant service discussions. Ask the provider about available flow, pressure, fire protection, treatment, discharge and required works. A pipe’s diameter is not a spare-capacity calculation.

Hydrometric and drought records

Use observations to understand the monitoring context and seasonal questions. Check the gauge’s location, period of record and relationship to the proposed source. A nearby river’s measured flow is not the project’s authorized withdrawal.

Water chemistry observations

Use recorded parameters, sample dates and locations to frame treatment questions. A historical sample from another location does not certify the suitability of the site’s future supply.

Water authorizations

Identify the right holder, purpose, source, quantity, conditions and relationship to the proposed project. Do not assume that a licence mapped nearby can be used or transferred to the development.

The Province states that groundwater diverted for non-domestic purposes, including commercial and industrial use, requires a water licence. A proposed groundwater solution therefore needs an authorization enquiry as well as a technical supply investigation. Source: B.C. requirements for groundwater users.

Broadband coverage is not a data-centre circuit offer.

ISED’s National Broadband Map presents retail service availability and broadband-program information. ISED explicitly says it cannot guarantee availability at a particular location and directs users to the provider. Treat that map as evidence of the local telecommunications context, not proof of enterprise capacity or a physical fibre route. Source: ISED National Broadband Map and coverage guidance.

For a data centre, send carriers the boundary, proposed building entrances, initial and ultimate bandwidth, destinations or interconnection needs, reliability objectives and target date. Ask for the offered service, committed capacity, latency basis, delivery works, commercial terms and route documentation.

A 1 Gbps target for a micro pilot, 10 Gbps for a small facility and 100 Gbps for a larger scenario are Atlas defaults. They are not sufficient specifications for every workload. Storage replication, AI data movement, tenant commitments and transit or peering strategy can change the requirements substantially.

Check the shared dependencies behind “two routes.”

Count independently supported paths, not provider logos. Two services may share a building entrance, street duct, bridge crossing, power dependency or upstream facility. A route-diversity review should identify where the paths separate, where they reconverge and what evidence supports the description.

• Request drawings or an appropriately scoped written description of the physical delivery paths.
• Check the planned building entrances and on-site separation against the concept layout.
• Record common ducts, crossings, facilities and other known shared dependencies.
• Ask each provider to explain the limits of the diversity claim and the proposed protection or restoration arrangement.

Atlas keeps requested route diversity distinct from verified route diversity. Public broadband polygons and ordinary map proximity do not resolve this review. See the underground utility guide for how licensed records and site-specific enquiries fit together.

Compare the questions that remain open.

A useful shortlist can show a clear water scenario and a clear connectivity requirement even when both services remain unconfirmed. Record the date, evidence, next action and accountable supplier for each unanswered condition.

Compare sites under the same operating assumptions first. Then test a cooling or connectivity alternative and make its trade-offs explicit. Lower annual cooling water may change the electrical or equipment brief; a second carrier may still leave a shared route dependency.

The sample Atlas report shows how evidence and unresolved service requirements can sit together. For a larger review, the one-site report package includes 25 hours of Driftwood design consultation to help turn those questions into a more focused concept brief.