Meters & Water LossAdvanced 30 min read

Meters & Water Loss: Active Leak Detection Program Design & Economic Level of Leakage

A Class 4 guide to designing an active leak detection program (acoustic correlation, satellite/aerial detection), the economic level of leakage concept, and how these tie back to the ILI to set defensible loss-reduction targets.

Knowing your Infrastructure Leakage Index tells you how much room you have to reduce real losses. It does not tell you how far it is actually worth pushing, or what tools to use to get there. Those two questions - how to find leaks proactively rather than waiting for them to surface, and how to decide when further leak-hunting stops being worth the money - are what separate a utility that manages its real losses from one that merely audits them. This guide builds directly on the water balance and ILI concepts from its companion guide.

From Passive to Active Leak Detection

Passive leak detection relies on leaks announcing themselves: a customer complaint, visible surfacing, a sinkhole, or a dramatic pressure drop. It costs nothing extra to run, but by definition it only catches leaks large enough, or long-lived enough, to become visible or reported - which means a meaningfu

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