Framework to Establish Economic Level of Leakage for Intermittent Water Supplies in Arid Environments

Municipalities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are putting serious efforts into reducing the water losses to around 8% (i.e., national benchmark) of supplied water through active leakage control (ALC). In this research, a framework is conceptualized and developed to establish economic level of leakage (ELL), keeping in view the specific conditions of arid regions. In general, water loss control actions, including ALC, passive leakage control, pressure management, and infrastructure asset management, are performed by the municipalities up to the service connections until the cost of these actions becomes equal to the cost of the water lost. For the explicit scenario of KSA, the framework also investigates the possibilities of water losses beyond the property line where water is intermittently supplied for a certain duration in a week and stored in underground tanks to ensure a continuous supply within the house. Night flow analyses were conducted to establish the relationship between pressure and water losses. The framework is implemented on a case study in the Alryan neighborhood of Buraydah (Qassim, KSA) to evaluate its practicality. Scenario analyses are conducted to appraise the economic viability of different management actions for establishing ELL. The study results reveal that conventional ALC can reduce the infrastructure leakage index from around 20 to 7.28, and an additional 43% decrease can be economically achieved by implementing pressure management and control measures on the homeowner side. Environmental valuation analysis demonstrates that upgrading the effectiveness of ALC with a small increase in water prices could further improve the ELL.