Abstract
Water main breaks in city areas can cause significant economic loss, interrupt traffic, and result in negative publicity for utilities. The South Australian Water Corporation (SA Water) has taken a proactive approach to reduce water main breaks in the Adelaide, Australia, central business district (CBD) by detecting developing pipe cracks/leaks using distributed acoustic sensors (accelerometers) with customized analytics and internet of things (IoT) technologies. This paper reports the findings and the outcomes of this initiative 24 months after the first commissioning of the continuous leak detection system. The acoustic data analytics team (comprising the authors) has successfully interpreted acoustic data from numerous cracked pipes in the Adelaide CBD, with approximately 55% of all developing leaks associated with cracked pipes being able to be detected before uncontrolled failure (i.e., before unplanned interruption of customers and/or third party economic damage). Furthermore, the localization and repair of specific cracks (sometimes through sections of corroded cast iron pipe walls) can help justify extending the service life of the water main as points of weakness (faults) are specifically rectified. However, only 45% of the developing cracks have been able to be repaired, after detection, under controlled conditions (i.e., before the planned interruption of customers) due to practical limitations affecting operational responses. The results have confirmed the additional insight that can be obtained by continuously collecting acoustic data in terms of distinguishing environmental and crack noises as well as circumferential from longitudinal cracks.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request (including noise magnitude data, sound files, and/or data processing scripts).
Acknowledgments
The research presented in this paper has been supported by the South Australian Water Corporation through a collaborative research project with the University of Adelaide (Project Code: 56118947) and the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Project (Project Code: LP180100569). The authors thank staff from Allwater (the operating partner for the South Australian Water Corporation) for their support during the field investigations.
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 10 • October 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 19, 2019
Accepted: Mar 13, 2020
Published online: Aug 7, 2020
Published in print: Oct 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Jan 7, 2021
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