Abstract:
The control of water losses is a major concern in the sustainability of urban water utilities and in
promoting the efficient use of this natural resource. Recent advances in telemetry technology provide
high-resolution consumption data at the consumer level, allowing for a remarkable knowledge
improvement on the different water balance components. However, few studies focus on systematic
approaches for improving system operation and maintenance by processing and analysing large
amounts of consumption data. This paper presents a new methodology to calculate real losses and
apparent losses in distribution networks using data collected from telemetry systems. The
methodology proposes a set of algorithms that are simple to implement. These algorithms were tested
on different district metered areas (DMA) to improve understanding about water loss components and
have already been included in commercial software. The results showed that these algorithms are
robust and allow for accurately estimating the background leakage level (and unreported leaks and
bursts), detecting earlier the occurrence of bursts and providing important insights into the type of
illegal water uses. The use of these approaches reduced non-revenue water by more than 10% in the
majority of the DMA tested. These findings are promising and demonstrate the strong potential of
telemetry systems to reduce water losses and to improve the understanding of water uses.
