Water companies in the UK are working on pollution reduction strategies with a sense of urgency, in line with Environment Agency and Ofwat expectations of more action.
Requiring particular focus will be rising main sewers – pressurised pipes that pump wastewater from a pumping station towards a treatment works. These are high risk, critical assets but with many in the UK ageing and becoming more vulnerable to bursts, historic programmes of proactive maintenance and investment may no longer be enough to keep up with the rate of deterioration.
Often situated in hard-to-reach, remote locations, including beneath rivers, railways and roads, and in environmentally sensitive areas, a burst rising main can have catastrophic ecological impact, with consequences that are unacceptable in the eyes of customers, regulators and stakeholders.
Advances in data science and artificial intelligence, including machine learning, mean the sector is now able to go beyond the basics of, for example, setting alarm thresholds on high flow rates. Sophisticated analysis of readily available data in near real-time means that much more reliable monitoring of rising main activity is now possible.
Learn how BurstDetect, Ovarro’s cloud-based early-warning system, accepts data at a range of monitoring frequencies with an algorithm being applied to understand and characterise ‘normal’ pumping station behaviour. If a potential burst is detected an alert is sent to control rooms, often within 30 minutes of the incident occurring, significantly improving historic reaction time.
George Heywood is a mathematician and environmental engineer with 25 years’ experience, mostly in asset management within the water industry. He is motivated by helping companies to improve their decision-making and situational awareness through data analytics and optimisation.
He is currently Subject Matter Expert in Ovarro's new Innovation Group, focusing on real-time analytics and asset management. He continue’s to have close involvement with the development and implementation of our PIONEER Asset Investment Planning software, as well as Miser, Optimiser and Datective.
Together with colleagues he has been able to contribute to research on behalf of the UK water industry in areas including strategic investment planning, asset deterioration modelling, real-time asset management, and the regulation of wastewater discharges.
For further information please visit www.ovarro.com/burstdetect
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