Client: Anglian Water
Water companies all want to provide the best service to their communities, with fewer bursts, lower leakage levels and lower operating costs. A clear understanding of where and when pipes are likely to fail is extremely helpful in reducing water mains bursts and leaks. Unfortunately, predicting pipe failure is like completing a very complex puzzle. The aging pipe network is comprised of many different pipe materials and is subject to changing environmental impacts from the different soils in which they are buried, and the weather. Furthermore, management interventions (like pressure management and proactive maintenance) all play a key role in the performance of the water network.
Over the last 5 years, Dr Tim Farewell has been helping Anglian Water assemble the many pieces of this puzzle (known as WISPA). Now, through environmental data science modelling of weather, soil, and infrastructure variables, Anglian Water are able to model where and when they should be observing burst water mains. This allows them to monitor the performance of their networks and identify the areas which would benefit most from investment or different management interventions. Research is ongoing to use WISPA models to predict the most likely locations for bursts in the coming 2 weeks, so Anglian Water can further reduce the numbers of minutes customers are without water to as close to zero as possible.
WISPA is helping Anglian Water deliver better service to their customers, reducing burst mains, energy usage and water leakage.
Find out more
To find out more please email Dr. Tim Farewell