Monitoring nonrevenue water performance in intermittent supply

Taha Al-Washali*, Saroj Sharma, Fadhl Al-Nozaily, Mansour Haidera, Maria Kennedy

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)
109 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Water utilities should monitor their nonrevenue water (NRW) levels properly to manage water losses and sustain water services. However, monitoring NRW is problematic in an intermittent water supply regime. This is because more supplied water to users imposes higher volumes of NRW, and supplying significantly less water results in an unmet water demand but interestingly less NRW. This study investigates the influence of the amount of water supplied to a distribution system on the reported level of NRW. The volume and indicators of NRW all vary with variations in the system input volume (SIV). This is even more critical for monitoring NRWfor systems shifting from intermittent to continuous supply. To enable meaningful monitoring, the NRW volume should be normalised. Addressing that, this research proposes two normalisation approaches: regression analysis and average supply time adjustment. Analysis of the NRW performance indicators showed that regression analysis enables the monitoring of NRW and tracking its progression in an individual system only, but not for a comparison with other systems. For comparing (or benchmarking) a water system to other systems with different supply patterns, the average supply time adjustment should be used. However, this approach presents significant uncertainties when the average supply time is less than eight hours per day.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1220
Number of pages15
JournalWater (Switzerland)
Volume11
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Assessment
  • Benchmarking
  • Intermittent supply
  • Nonrevenue water (NRW)
  • Normalisation
  • Performance indicators
  • Water loss
  • When-system-is-pressurised

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Monitoring nonrevenue water performance in intermittent supply'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this