In Italy more than 30% of the water destined for users is "wasted" in its journey along the network: Milan (with a loss below 10%) is among the most efficient, but it must be related to its size.
Unfortunately, the impact is much higher than other aqueducts where exponentially higher losses tell us of much smaller absolute quantities: in short, we waste water, and this can have various types of impacts, including on people's safety.
La European legislation it is changing, forcing member states to monitor more accurately both the profitability of the networks and the quality of the water supplied. In fact, two documents were drafted (Water Safety Plan e Water Leakage Management ) which contain the Good Practice for the aqueduct of the future (and maybe of the present).
Both concern compliance with regulations that aim to improve the "product/service" they offer and have direct impacts on three aspects that are vital for anyone running an aqueduct:
- the quality of the water,
- efficiency of the facilities to ensure service continuity
- the reduction of delivery costs.
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On the other hand, the Environment Directorate of the European Commission published in 2015 the document "Good practices for the management of water losses”: an up-to-date technical and regulatory reference for loss management for all European managers and regulators.
So here is a brief excursus of how technology with sensors, control systems, remote control, energy management and maintenance information systems can represent a valid complement to meet the compliance requirements of these regulations.
One of the key points in the model to be adopted to guarantee homogeneity both in the quality and in the continuity of service delivery lies in the correct monitoring of the pressure points in the aqueduct distribution network through a series of sensors connected to the remote control capable of merge the information on the pressures detected in the various points of the network during the provision of the service on an ongoing basis, so as to be able to build the operating model in the different time slots of the day and in the different seasons of the year, also in consideration of any variations of the population, of the climatic data and of the trend of the atmospheric precipitations.
READ THE FULL DOCUMENT: WATER SAFETY PLAN AND WATER LEAKAGE MANAGEMENT