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Smart water for leakage detection: Feedback about the use of automated
meter reading technology

Conference Paper · September 2017

DOI: 10.1109/SENSET.2017.8125061

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 Smart Water for Leakage Detection: Feedback about
the Use of Automated Meter Reading Technology
Elias Farah, Isam Shahrour
Laboratoire de Génie Civil et géo-Environnement (LGCgE)
Université de Lille
59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
Abstract—Recent advances in intelligent water meter
technology have improved the quantitative monitoring in water
supply and distribution. Smart meters using Automated Meter
Reading (AMR) technology allowed water utilities to: i) provide
clear consumption patterns which can help customers to track
and control their water usage and ii) improve active leakage
targeting and leak detection capability. This paper presents a
feedback about the use of AMR system to detect leakage in a
large-scale demonstration site, which is conducted at the
Scientific Campus of the University of Lille, which is
representative to a small town. This paper presents the
demonstration site as well as its monitoring using AMR and how
the recorded data allowed a rapid detection of water leakage in
the campus.
Keywords—water; automated meter reading; leakage detection;
balance; minimum night flow
I. INTRODUCTION
Climate change, water scarcity, population growth and
urbanization have been increasing the responsibility of water
utilities to ensure a sustainable urban water management [1]. In
this context, water providers have adopted several strategies to
manage the water demand like metering, pricing and water loss
control. They provide meters on customer service connections
to register the water consumption for billing purposes and to
monitor the distribution networks. Meters are usually read by
Manual Meter Reading (MMR) or Automated Meter Reading
(AMR) [2]. The manual water meter reading is a tedious,
expensive and highly labor-intensive job [3]. The development
of the communication technologies enables households and
water utilities to access water usage data through smart water
meters or AMR systems [4]. These smart meters can collect
and communicate in real-time the recorded data. Meter readers
are able to collect from 600 to 1000 reads per day by an
operator with a radio-equipped handheld computer [5]. This
number of meter reads can reach about 20 000 meters per day
using a vehicle equipped with communication devices [6].
However, these two AMR forms remain a labor-cost process.
The fixed network provides the meter reading at any frequency
interval (hourly [7] or even shorter periods like 10 seconds [8])
and at any time of the day. Concerning the communications
networks, water utilities use the Radio Frequency (RF) and the
commercially available wireless and mobile networks like
GSM-GPRS, WiFi [9], Zigbee-3G [10] and 4G Long Term
Evolution (LTE) [11].
978-1-5090-6011-5/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
This innovation in meter technology has allowed water
utilities to measure water consumption with an improving
accuracy. Leak detection capabilities start to be developed.
Leaks on the customer side of the meter can be identified by
analyzing the consumption profile; alerts could be sent by
email or SMS message. Water utilities use the AMR systems to
detect and quantify the water losses in District Metered Areas
(DMA) [12]. The water supply to the DMA can be compared
to the consumption volumes during a defined period and
construct a water balance [13]. AMR systems provide also the
Minimum Night Flow (MNF), which allows the evaluation of
the leakage level [12].
This paper presents a feedback about the use of the AMR
for leakage detection in a large-scale demonstrator.
II. METHODOLOGY
The consumption data collected using AMR are transformed
into useful information concerning leakage detection at two
scales: end-user and DMA. The water consumption data are
stored in a PostgreSQL database, which includes Start Date,
End Date as time-stamp, meter IDs and the consumption
value. A pre-processing step is performed to clean the raw
data. A workflow is developed to calculate the hourly, daily,
weekly, and seasonal variation in the consumption flows, as
well as allowing the evaluation of the water balance and the
minimum night flow as two methods for leak detection.
Consumption data collected during a sufficient period are
used to build water consumption profiles based on Probability
Density Functions (PDFs), taking into account the effect of
working days, holidays and weekends on the consumption. The
probability that a variable X takes a value more than x is
calculated using the following equation:
P(X>x) = 1− P(X<x) (1)
Based on this probability theorem, the historical daily water
consumption values are used to determine the cumulative
density function for each meter. The result function describes
the cumulative frequency of the observed value and the
corresponding density function determines the probability of
occurrence of a variable. Any anomaly in the water
consumption could be recognized by its lower probability of
occurrence. A lower and an upper bound are computed. The
lower bound matches the leak probability of 0% and the upper
limit corresponds to a leak probability of 100%. If any
consumption value exceeds the upper bound, an alarm is
generated.

III. CASE STUDY

A. Site Description
The demo site concerns the water distribution network of
the Scientific Campus of the University of Lille located in
North of France [14]. This water network is composed of
15 km of grey cast iron pipes over 60 years old with a diameter
varying from 20 to 300 mm. It includes 49 hydrants designed
according to the firefighting standards, 250 isolation valves and
a set of air valves. The water network is supplied at 5 sections
located in the North, West and South of the campus. It serves
150 buildings used for teaching, research, administration,
services, students' residences, restaurants and entertainment
activities. This network suffers from significant real and
apparent losses. Real losses are due to aging infrastructures and
soil movement (freeze-thaw cycles, works in proximity). Other
losses are caused by unauthorized consumption related to water
theft from the fire hydrants and the unmetered water volumes
consumed for specific needs to clean the network or used for
construction operations.

B. Monitoring system
The water network is monitored by 93 smart water meters
using the AMR technology. The 93 smart meters record hourly
the water consumption of buildings (80) as well as at the water
supply (13). These meters allow detecting abnormal
consumption related to leakage or abnormal use. Each water
meter has an impulse sensor and a VHF radio transmitter. The
index of the water consumption is read by the impulse sensor
that converts it into an electronic index. The impulse counter is
connected to a microcontroller unit to store the cumulative
readings for transmission.
The readings are transmitted via a radio frequency
(169 MHz) to the collectors or base stations. Two types of
transmitters are used: compact transmitters and wired
transmitters. The former includes a built-in sensor (Cyble LRF
VHF=169 MHz) to get the index of the water meter through a
pulse output. They are reliable and placed easily without any
wires. When the signal is low, generally in basements, the
wired transmitters are used. These kinds of transmitters are
composed of a Cyble sensor V2 that is placed on the meter
with a pulse output connected through a cable to a stand-alone
transmitter to send the collected data to the base stations. The
radio receivers for the base stations are installed on 4 buildings
as shown in Fig. 1. These receivers collect the indexes
transmitted within a maximum range of 300 meters in urban
area. The base stations send the data via the mobile network to
a central information system with 4 signals per day of 1/10th of
a second.
A major issue encountered in the telemetry system concerns
the loss of signal transmission. In 2015, 12% of the water
consumption data were lost due to the abruption of the signal.
Fig. 1. Distribution of the water meters and the receivers in the campus.
IV. RESULTS
A. Leakage at the end-user side
The AMR installed inside the campus buildings offer a
continuous monitoring of the consumption profile. An
abnormal increase in the consumption could indicate a leak.
Fig. 2 shows the consumption of a building, used for teaching,
during 4 weeks of May 2014. This figure shows clearly a leak
during the second weekend.
Due to the variety of usage in the campus buildings, night
consumption is legitimate for some buildings (i.e. used for
research). The MNF is computed between 2:00 am and
6:00 am. Fig. 3 represents the distribution of the average of the
MNF recorded in August 2015. It can be shown that the
average MNF for the students’ residences (building inside the
dotted black circles) varies between 0.1 m3/h and 0.5 m3/h.
This consumption is related to the presence of students in the
campus during the summer vacation. The volume of 0.5 m3/h is
equivalent to 50 toilet flushes per hour. As shown in Fig. 3, a
leakage occurred in a building in the Physic sector (see the
building inside the dotted red circle), where the MNF reaches
0.5 m3/h.
 0.35 Fig. 4 illustrates the PDFs for an academic building in working
May 2014
and non-working days. During a working day, the daily water
0.3
1st week consumption of this building varies between 12 and 37 m3/day.
2nd week
3rd week
For this building, water consumption higher than 42 m3/day has
4th week
a probability of 10%. During weekends and holidays, the lower
0.25 limit passes from 2 m3/day to zero and the upper bound drops
from 52 m3/day to 35 m3/day. This building tends generally to
consume 5 m3/day during non-working days. This consumption
0.2
Flow (m 3 /h)

is due to research facilities.

Leak
0.15 Teaching and Research Chemistry Building
100
Working days
90 Non-working days
0.1
80

0.05 70

Probability X>x (%)

60
0
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 50

Fig. 2. Water consumption profiles for a university building for teaching 40

over the 4 weeks of May 2014.
30

20

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
3
Consumption (m /day)

Fig. 4. PDFs for water consumption per day of a teaching and research
buidling in working and non-working days.

B. Leakage at the DMA scale

Fig. 3. MNF in the buildings of the campus in August 2015.
The daily water consumption data collected for 2 years are
used to calculate the PDFs. These data are divided into two
groups: (i) working days and (ii) weekends and holidays. The
built function must be free from any abnormal event in the
past; a pre-processing step is therefore conducted to perform
data cleaning. The values are filtered to eliminate the outliers
that exceed the average plus 2 standard deviations.
DMA leakage can be reasonably measured by subtracting
supply input from customer consumption during the minimum
consumption period. In this case study, the water distribution
network of the campus is considered as one DMA. The input
volume is measured by the supply meters and the consumption
volumes are computed from the sub-meters installed in the
buildings. The calculation of the water balance during August
2015 shows a Non-Revenue Water (NRW) volume of
13 320 m3. This volume represents 50% of the water supply.
To evaluate the real loss volumes, a bottom-up assessment was
performed. Fig. 4 shows the MNF during the month of August
2015. The MNF is equal to 15 m3/h, which is equivalent to
11 160 m3 for this month. This volume corresponds to the real
loss volumes in the water network. The calculation of the MNF
has also allowed the detection of 3 leaks during the summer
holidays in 2015. As shown in Fig. 5, the leaks occurred
August 3, 11 to 13 and 28.
The real water losses in the campus network in 2015 were
extremely high. The inflow from the supply meters was
monitored especially during minimum night flow, and
compared to a previously measured reference value. Several
suspicious sectors subjected to leaks were spotted. A sounding
survey for these areas detected 25 unreported leaks. The
reparation of these leaks reduced the NRW by 36%.
 45
which was conducted at the scientific campus of the University
40
of Lille. The data collected using AMR allowed a rapid
identification of leakage in both the water network and
35 buildings (users' side). The combination of the AMR with both
the balance method and the Minimum Night Flow presents a
Minimum Night Flow (m3/h)

30 powerful tool for leakage detection in the water network. The

use of the buildings’ profile consumption is recommended for
25
the detection of leakage in buildings.
20
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