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.