Building Drought Resilience with Water Infrastructure

Situation: Aging Infrastructure Leading to Water Loss

A small, historic Pennsylvania city was struggling with non-revenue water. With a population of just under 60,000 people, the city’s two drinking water treatment facilities provide clean water to local residents as well as more than 50,000 other people in the wider area, sourcing water from nearby rivers and distributing it via a network comprising over 45,000 taps.

The city has a history that stretches back to the 1700s. Like many communities across the country, its water infrastructure is similarly historic, and the city was suffering from an estimated non-revenue water loss of over 28%.

City leaders wanted to reduce withdrawals from nearby rivers and build drought resilience. Having traditionally relied on visual inspections and routine maintenance activities, they wanted to assess the effectiveness of new technologies.

Solution: Digital Technology to Improve Leak Detection

The city identified CRH Company, Oldcastle Infrastructure’s CivilSense™ as a technology with the potential to improve its leak detection effectiveness and efficiency, and requested a pilot of the CivilSense™ Direct real-time leak detection service.

The Oldcastle Infrastructure team worked with the city to develop a project to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technology. The pilot involved deploying temporary CivilSense™ sensors across 50 mi (80 km) of mainline piping across the center of the city, AI analysis of gathered acoustic data, and a report pinpointing the location of any leaks detected.

Outcome: Detected Leaks Equating to 94 Million Gallons (356,000 m³) of Water Loss Each Year

The Oldcastle Infrastructure team deployed 280 sensors in 625 sessions across the 50 miles of network, generating 52 distinct waypoints.

AI analysis determined that 13 of these waypoints were leaks: seven small, five medium, and one large. The leaks were detected on mains, at client meters and in assets such as valves and hydrants; using American Water Works Association (AWWA) nominal values, the total water loss from these leaks was estimated at 180 gpm (11.4 L/s) of water loss, which equates to over 94 million gallons per year (356,000 m³ per year).