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Learnings from event triangulation

The South East Water leakage team came to Syrinix to look at new ways of understanding what was going on within their DMA's

The objective from South East Water was to mitigate the impact of transient events and optimise the network, but also detect and understand more about any anomalous activity. This was in support of the recent PR19 submission and SMART network pilot whilst also targeting a reduction in leakage aligned to the corporate ‘Drive to 85’ driver. The simple aim being to get leakage down to 85MLD.

South East Water were keen to discover how high-resolution pressure monitoring could inform and expand knowledge on event detection. Different scales and types of events such as bursts, breaches, flow restrictions and valve operations were simulated on the network to get field results on detectability and within that an understanding of how far the wave would travel.

Graph showing a simulated burst that was picked up and detected by three monitors
Fig 1 shows a simulated burst that was picked up and detected by three monitors

 

Map showing the location of monitors which detected the event, predicted locations and where the burst actually occurred

Burst events were simulated, using a modified standpipe, at multiple locations across the DMA. The captured event data was used to validate the detectability of the events, improve the amplitude decay model and test the event triangulation algorithms.

Syrinix analysts used the captured data from PIPEMINDER-S sensors, and GIS to calculate the source of the burst event (triangulation).

Many simulated events were conducted at different locations across two different DMAs, to investigate different network structures, pipe material and dimensions. The results giving a clear view on the size and scale of events that could be detected against the sensor deployment plan.

The project delivered an improved understanding of transient event detection, wave propagation (amplitude decay) and event triangulation analysis.

This has led to the development of deployment planning tools, to position devices against a set objective and automated event triangulation, position confidence and size estimation on RADAR.

 

"Knowing that you can accurately and automatically detect events is a massive step change plus the ability to triangulate the location of burst main events, quantify the volume and alarm in real time is a game changer.

Add in the implementation of a deployment tool that can be used to plan the network, is a major step forward towards a live operational system."

Rob Anthony-Scourse, Network Manager, South East Water

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