Water Loss Management in Very Small Municipalities— Bridging the Gap from Research to Practice

Tyrol is a federal state of Austria inheriting 279 municipalities. Authorities of those municipalities operate water distribution systems that supply water for less than 5,000 inhabitants although some of them are larger than Paris metropolitan area. Due to long networks paired with relatively low income (because of a small number of consumers), advanced water loss strategies and highly qualified manpower are too expensive. Thus, this paper specifies and discusses legal requirements and state funding for water loss management in Austria. Further, it gives insight in different standard strategies and discusses the applicability of those to very small municipalities (less than 5,000 consumers). Finally, the results of compiled water loss statistics are presented and evaluated. It can be substantiated that for very small municipalities, there is a lack of reliable data for rehabilitation works. Therefore, rehabilitation planning based on pipe survival curves is no adequate instrument to reduce water loss. In contrast, on-line flow metering can lead to minimal night network inflow of less than 3% of the average demand. The evaluation of state funded leakage detection campaigns shows that with adequate countermeasures, water loss can be reduced significantly.