Article
Reduce the impact of pipe bursts
What if we told you there is a way to prevent pipe bursts from happening in your water or wastewater network? Impossible, right? Actually, no. All you need is the right tool.
First of all, let’s look at some of the reasons why you should prioritise resources to proactively prevent pipe bursts:
1. Environmental impact
Pipe bursts involve lots of wasted water as well as wasted energy from transporting water that never reaches consumers. The increasing focus on climate challenges means you want to reduce water and energy waste as much as possible to live up to your responsibility and to care for your image.
2. Finances
When water is leaking from your distribution network, you are almost literally pouring money down the drain. Not only are you losing revenue from the wasted water, but you are actually paying to transport that non-revenue water.
3. Public image
In addition to the negative impact of wasting scarce resources, your public image suffers even further when you are unable to deliver water to consumers which can easily become a consequence of bursts in your water distribution network. As a water utility, people in your area rely on you for access to water at everything from private homes to schools, hospitals and zoos. Furthermore, unplanned repairs will often inconvenience road users.
Who suffers from bursts in your network?
Because preventing pipe bursts can seem like a daunting task, many water utilities wait until a burst has happened to take measures to fix it. But that can leave consumers without water for a while.
For most people, not having access to water is an inconvenience but for some consumers, it is catastrophic. What critical points are in your network? Think hospitals, fire hydrants and businesses that cannot run without access to water.
Solution: Utilise historic data to predict pipe bursts
By monitoring the status of your pipes and comparing data about materials and age with historic data about bursts in your network, you can actually predict where in your network a burst is most likely to happen and proactively take action to prevent it. That way, you can reduce revenue loss, energy waste, water waste and inconvenience for your customers.
Another important thing is to make sure that your planning department and operations department are working closely together. If they do not have access to the same information and understand each other’s plans, they will not be able to successfully collaborate to fix the problem.