Water leak detection

• Telemetry leaves the OT network one way, through a DMZ, and joins the logger and smart meter feeds in one event pipeline outside it.
• Night-flow models compare each DMA's minimum night flow with its expected legitimate use, and flag DMAs where leakage is rising, with the size of the rise and a confidence.
• Burst detection watches flow and pressure in near real time, and acoustic models classify logger noise as likely leak, likely not, or unclear, pointing to the stretch of main between loggers.
• Signals about the same leak are grouped into one suspected leak and ranked by estimated volume, risk to customers and critical assets, and how sure the evidence is.
• An agent assembles the evidence pack and drafts the work order, including the valves that might need operating and the properties and priority customers that would be affected.
• A leakage analyst confirms every suspected leak before a job is raised. A network controller decides any valve operation or interruption, and the customer team decides who is contacted and how. The AI never operates the network.

• OfwatPR24 performance commitments for 2025–2030: leakage and water supply interruptions
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  Ofwat's PR24 package includes a 17% cut in leakage over 2025–2030, measured as a three-year average against a 2019–20 baseline, with financial incentives either way. Supply interruptions are a separate commitment, so a fix that shuts off hundreds of homes can cost more than it saves. The model helps find leaks; it never calculates the reported leakage figure, which stays with the regulatory reporting team under Ofwat's methodology and assurance. The government plans to replace Ofwat with a single new water regulator; Ofwat's rules apply until then.

• DefraLeakage targets: halving leakage by 2050, with interim targets
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  Water companies have committed to cut leakage by 50% by 2050 from a 2017–18 baseline. The government's delivery plan sets interim leakage reductions of 20% by 31 March 2027 and 30% by 31 March 2032. The design keeps the evidence for each repair, so progress can be shown leak by leak, not only in the annual total.

• OfwatWater (Special Measures) Act 2025
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  Ofwat now sets rules that can stop performance-related pay for directors where a company misses standards on customers, the environment, financial resilience or criminal liability, and obstructing a regulator's investigation is an offence. Leakage evidence gets board-level scrutiny. Keep a complete, retrievable record of every alert, decision and repair, and never let a model change a reported number.

• Defra / DWINIS Regulations 2018 and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill
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  A company supplying drinking water to 200,000 or more people is an operator of essential services. Defra and the Welsh Ministers are the competent authorities, with the DWI acting for them. Telemetry and SCADA are part of the essential service, so the leak platform reads from them through a one-way, outbound-only path and can never write back. The Bill, still going through Parliament, will tighten incident reporting and bring managed service providers into scope.

• DefraGuaranteed Standards Scheme (strengthened July and October 2025)
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  In England, a planned interruption of more than four hours needs 48 hours' notice, or the company owes £50 to a household and £100 to a business. If supply isn't restored within 12 hours of an unplanned interruption, a household is owed £50 and a further £50 for each 12 hours after. A separate standard covers support for customers on the priority services register. The work order shows the properties and priority customers a shut-off would affect, and the notice clock, so a person can plan it.

• DfT / highway authoritiesNew Roads and Street Works Act 1991 and permit schemes
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  Every excavation needs a permit or notice. Urgent leak repairs are immediate works with a short notification window, and since 5 January 2026 fixed penalties have doubled and overrun charges apply at weekends and bank holidays. The AI never books or starts works. Leaks that can wait are grouped so one planned permit covers several repairs.

• ICOUK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018: smart meter data
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  Household consumption at hourly or finer intervals is personal data, and can show when people are home. Use it for leak detection under a stated lawful basis and privacy information, aggregate it to DMA level wherever that is enough, and keep it only as long as needed. A DPIA comes before the pilot. Contacting a customer about a leak on their side is a person's decision, following the company's published policy.

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• A leakage manager owns the models and thresholds for each DMA type, with change control like any other operational system.
• A daily review of new suspected leaks during the pilot, with technicians' findings fed back as labels.
• Override rules: analysts record why they rejected or reprioritised a suspected leak, and the reasons are reviewed monthly.
• The OT security owner signs off every new connection, and the isolation plan is tested before go-live.
• Valve operations and interruptions follow the existing network operations procedures and control room authority, with Guaranteed Standards and priority customers checked before any planned shut-off.
• Regulatory reporting stays separate: the reported leakage figure is calculated under Ofwat's methodology by the reporting team, and assured as now.

1. 4 weeks

   Discovery

   Map today's leakage process, check telemetry, logger and meter data quality in candidate DMAs, clean a year of repair records, and agree the OT/IT boundary.

2. Gate · must be true to passPilot DMAs chosen, data access agreed with telemetry engineers, OT security review and DPIA started, baseline find rate and awareness time measured.

3. 12 weeks

   Pilot

   40–60 DMAs, in shadow mode: suspected leaks go to the leakage team only, and are compared with what technicians find.

4. Gate · must be true to passFind rate and awareness time within agreed limits, no route into OT found in testing, and the leakage manager signs off.

5. 4–6 weeks

   Production

   Draft work orders go live in the pilot DMAs, with monitoring, support and a rollback plan.

6. Gate · must be true to passIsolation plan tested, support model in place, analysts and controllers trained.

7. Ongoing

   Scale

   Add DMAs in waves, then customer-side leak alerts as smart meter coverage grows.

8. Gate · must be true to passEach wave passes the same pilot gate; each new data source passes its own security and data protection review.

R ResponsibleA AccountableC ConsultedI Informed· not involved

Where I'd fit

1. 1

   Goes wrong

   Every signal raises its own job, and technicians visit the same leak three times.

   How the design avoids it

   Group events into one suspected leak by location and time window, with an ID on every event so retries never duplicate.

2. 2

   Goes wrong

   Find rate is low, crews dig dry holes, and the field stops trusting the alerts.

   How the design avoids it

   Shadow mode first, a find-rate measure from day one, and technicians' findings fed back as labels.

3. 3

   Goes wrong

   The pilot connects to telemetry outstations directly, and the OT team finds out afterwards.

   How the design avoids it

   Read from a historian replica through the DMZ, with telemetry engineers designing the connection.

4. 4

   Goes wrong

   A repair is prioritised on volume alone, and a large interruption costs more than the leak.

   How the design avoids it

   Rank on volume, customer impact and risk together, and leave every valve and interruption decision with the control room.

5. 5

   Goes wrong

   Smart meter data drifts into other uses nobody told customers about.

   How the design avoids it

   A DPIA, a stated purpose, DMA-level aggregation where possible, and access limited to the leakage team.

1. Outcome awaited
   Ofwat's leakage reporting methodology consultation (27 August to 9 October 2026) asked how to use more smart meter data, whether to keep night-flow calculation or move to a 24-hour water balance, and whether to phase changes in.

   Keep raw DMA and meter data, not just model outputs, so leakage can be recalculated under whichever method Ofwat decides.

2. By 31 March 2027
   The interim target of a 20% cut in leakage from the 2017–18 baseline, then 30% by March 2032.

   Report the pilot DMAs' contribution in the same units as the company's leakage glidepath.

3. Legislation to come
   The government plans a water bill to replace Ofwat with a single regulator covering economic, drinking water and environmental regulation, as set out in its January 2026 white paper.

   Keep evidence and audit trails in plain, regulator-neutral formats, so they serve whichever regulator asks.

4. Late 2026–2028
   The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill tightens incident reporting for operators of essential services and brings medium and large managed service providers into regulation.

   Check whether your telemetry, logger or IT support providers are in scope, and update contracts and incident reporting to match.

5. 2025–2030
   Water companies plan to fit about 10.4 million smart meters, reaching roughly half of homes and businesses by 2030.

   Design meter intake and storage for that growth, and keep the DPIA current as coverage rises.