Operational Tools for Decision Support in Leakage Control

Water utilities particularly in the developing countries are still grappling with challenges of high water losses due to leakage. District Meter Areas, pressure management and network hydraulic modeling have proven to be powerful engineering tools for reducing leakage in many developed countries notably in the UK. Despite their apparent success, these tools have not had wide application in the developing countries partly due to inadequate information on cost-benefit analyses to support management decision making in implementation of pressure management policies. To address this constraint, this paper develops a decision support tool for predicting the associated benefits to make a sound financial case for investment in pressure management strategies. The predicted benefits by the tool are compared with those derived using network hydraulic modeling to give users confidence in the tool results. The predicted benefits are illustrated on a real-developing world case study in Kampala city, Uganda. Predictions by the tool and the network hydraulic model indicate that reducing average pressure in the DMA by 7.5 m could result into annual net benefits of Euro 56,190 and Euro 66,910 respectively without compromising the customer level of service. The results obtained indicate that the predicted net financial benefits compare fairly well.