Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - WADI (WADI)
Teaser
Water scarcity is a worldwide concern. In some places of Europe, as much as 50% of water resources are being lost before they reach the tap due to relevant losses in water transmission systems. Detection of leakages in large diameter mains, which represent a high share of the...
Summary
Water scarcity is a worldwide concern. In some places of Europe, as much as 50% of water resources are being lost before they reach the tap due to relevant losses in water transmission systems. Detection of leakages in large diameter mains, which represent a high share of the total water losses, is key, but it has been poorly addressed due to the challenges it faces, such as less frequent access to pipe, quickly attenuated high frequency noise, multiple travel paths. Moreover, a major factor hampering the market uptake of innovative solutions in the field of water leak detection in large mains is the lack of real scale demonstration of their long-term viability.
The WADI project proves the feasibility of an airborne water leak detection surveillance service, aimed at providing water utilities with adequate information on leaks in water infrastructure outside urban areas, thus enabling prompt and cost-effective repairs. More specifically, the objective of WADI are: to contribute to the reduction of losses in water transmission systems for water supply, irrigation, and hydropower; to decrease the related energy consumption and CO2 emissions; to help utilities in providing services more cost - effectively ; to integrate a reliable and scalable concept of the ecosystem services evaluation in water management.
WADI’s service feasibility is being tested in an operational environment in two pilot sites, in France and Portugal, different for infrastructure type and age, water uses, accessibility, soil plant cover type etc.
Work performed
\"WADI carried out a thorough revision of the state of the technologies and services that are relevant for the competitive positioning of WADI, as well as the definition of end users’ requirements (WP2).
Concerning \"\"Demonstration of airborne innovative techniquesâ€, the project selected & purchased various equipment for the WADI sensors system on the airborne platform, including calibration and integration to enable flights in real conditions.
In WP4 “Smart data processing and standardization†the project provided the operational software required for WADI inversion data processing, optimized using multiple processing approaches, fast computing running and cognitive ergonomic design and usage.
The \"\"Validation demonstrations in France\"\" (WP5) performed real flight tests were performed over different type of water supply infrastructure site using the instrumented aircraft and UAV, providing data for a comparative assessment of WADI solution with a typical ground leak detection technique (acoustic), collecting airborne measurement data and flight parameters for data processing and results analysis and to make improvements relevant to sensor system and data processing.
The \"\"Operational demonstration in Portugal\"\" (WP6) will provide results for the operational and surveillance demonstration in Portugal from the air and ground campaigns on an irrigation water infrastructure at EDIA’s site in the Monto Novo region, based on the results of WP5. These activities are currently in progress and the results will be available in the coming months.
The “Analysis of the results and societal benefits†(WP7) carried out gathering data activities related to the development of environmental and economic (LCA and LCC) life cycle analysis for WADI services. A performance matrix for evaluating the probability detection depending on specific parameters (as kind of transmission system, vegetation, soil and humidity) has been developed in order to be compared to other non-underground water leaks detection systems.
In “Legal and regulatory aspects analysis†(WP8) WADI performed the analysis of the legal and regulatory framework, with the definition of the regulatory state of play of leak management, including analysis of the data protection aspects, analysis of the applicability of critical infrastructure legislation and sectorial legislation to the WADI results, mapping and analysis on current terms and conditions in the marketplace for drone-based services, drafting IPR and exploitation guidelines for the WADI consortium members.
The “Market analysis and exploitation†(WP9) covered the competitive position of the WADI service and for the Business Plan in particular, this involved working with other consortium members to estimate the investment and operating costs of the WADI system.
“Communication and Dissemination†(WP10) effectively managed the outreach of the project results to the principal stakeholders. WADI website has been visited by 3,267 users, who viewed 9,037 pages in 4,509 sessions. A new section dedicated to WADI’s sister projects was launched. WADI’s posts had an estimated audience of about 185 000 people on Twitter and 175 000 people on LinkedIn.The WADI newsletter has been sent out regularly; WADI articles and press releases were read more than 8,000 times on WADI website and on syndicated multipliers; 3 scientific publications were issued; the WADI partners participated in 9 events.\"
Final results
The activities carried out so far in WADI confirm the relevance of developing an innovative solution to deal with water leak detection and indicate that the main impacts foreseen for WADI are overall still valid.
In terms of technology, the tests conducted during the first campaigns allowed the validation of the fundamental concepts of WADI. WADI carried out flights with both manned and unmanned platforms equipped with dedicated optical instruments with the aim to map soil/vegetation moisture from vegetation index+temperature images. This is the first time that two means of this type have been used over common zones with natural and artificial leaks, “nearly†simultaneously. Significant progress has been achieved as far as image processing is concerned. The proposed method for image processing is much simpler than those seen in the literature and leads to reasonably the same moisture-index map. In addition the consortium sound out that two cameras with fixed filters connected to the on-board computer to perform the acquisition could be used as an alternative to a multispectral wheel camera. This setup would lead to a drastic decrease of price while increasing the performance and the reliability of the image acquisition process and could impact in the final price of the WADI service, making it more affordable and competitive.
MAV and UAV devices and the corresponding IR and Multispectral cameras have been analyzed from an environmental point of view (LCA). An advance in the SotA has been done, thanks to the provision of environmental impacts representative values for this water leakage detection methodology. Manufacturing, use and disposal steps for WADI service elements (drones/planes, and cameras) and the impact when water leaks are detected in the ecosystem services are now identified and quantified.
Project exploitation focused on analyzing the main competition and comparing the pilot results of WADI in order to determine whether minimum and desired parameters of potential clients can be achieved. As expected, WADI may hardly prove to be competitive in urban and heavily built-up areas, but is unlikely to be cost-effective in rural areas or areas with low network density. Such areas, however, are ideally suited to the WADI system. WADI appears therefore a technology that will expand the overall market for leakage detection as it will be possible to provide a cost-effective solution for previously underserved areas.
Website & more info
More info: http://www.waditech.eu.