A novel digital strategy to support leakage detection in WDNs

Background: Real water losses are among the most critical challenges in managing urban water distribution networks (WDN). They represent a key indicator of the system’s overall “health”, depending on asset deterioration and pressure control. Reducing water losses carries important socio-economic and environmental consequences, affecting the sustainability, reliability, and affordability of water supply systems. Digital transformation offers unprecedented opportunity to reach these goals by reviewing technical decision processes and exploiting new tools and technologies. Methods: In the context of water losses management in WDN, a digital strategy has been recently introduced to support various asset management tasks, including model construction (i.e. geometric model, model calibration), engineering of network monitoring (design of district metering areas design – DMA) and control, up to planning actions (pipe replacement, isolation valve systems). This work presents a novel two-phase model-based strategy for leakage detection in WDN cast into a structured digital water strategy for asset management based on the paradigm of digital water services. The first phase identifies the DMA affected by a punctual leakage, exploiting the novel asset management support indicator (AMSI); the second phase pre-localises the leaking pipe within that DMA, based on anomalies in pressure observations. Results: The methodology is demonstrated on a real case WDN. The leakage detection strategy identifies a sequence of pipes to inspect analysing the pressure variations with respect to the normal operating condition. Different examples of pipe classification are reported. Conclusion: The new leakage detection strategy is consistent with the digital water strategy, supporting the asset management task with specific tool. Moreover, field-data and information can be progressively integrated to refine the inspection sequence, enhancing leakage detection over time.