From March to May 2024, our TUBERS consortium attended different conferences in the water industry, from WWT Innovation and Smart Water Conference to Journées économiques France-Maroc: l’eau, enjeux et perspectives and the Utility Week Congress. There, our Joel van den Bosch from our partner Alsymex, attending the above events, seized the opportunity to meet with water company representatives and municipalities to discuss the topics of Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and leakage issues in the water distribution systems.

Therefore, to inform the members of our TUBERS community, we have collected the key takeaways and valuable information received through the discussions about the current state of the water industry.

Over the last 7+ years, investment in digitalising pipe networks with smart metering, pressure sensors, and data processing in hydraulic predictive models (increasingly AI-driven) has contributed to effectively preventing leakage crises and impacted very positively the speed of technological intervention to eliminate the leaks. However, accurately locating leakage and replacing the leaking pipe sections remain labour-intensive field activities.

Water companies and municipalities operate distribution networks in arid climate regions. Under the harsh conditions mentioned above, they increasingly face the challenge of maintaining the distribution pipes connecting multiple reservoirs and hydraulic basins in pristine condition. By doing so, they ensure the supply of vital drinking water in sufficient volume to the population all year round.

Yet, as the population in urban areas grows, so does the need for improved water network management since the distribution networks become increasingly complicated. The acceleration of cycles in changing weather climate patterns shift repeatedly and quickly from dry-high to rainy to sub-zero temperatures, and the intervention teams are under additional stress as these conditions heavily challenge the integrity of the networks.

For all the reasons mentioned above, over the past years, the UK Water Industry Research(UKWIR) initiated a Leakage Innovation Heatmap under the leadership of Jeremy Heath fromSES Water. The goal is to provide fertile ground for technological projects to meet the demand for improved water distribution and to answer one of the UKWIR’s most critical questions: “How will we achieve Zero Leakage in a sustainable way by 2050?”