One Meter to Find Them All - Water Network Leak

Localization Using a Single Flow Meter

Iyswarya Narayanan∗ , Arunchandar Vasan† , Venkatesh Sarangan† and Anand Sivasubramaniam∗

∗ Departmentof Computer Science and Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Email: {iun106, anand}@cse.psu.edu
† Innovation Labs, Tata Consultancy Services,

IIT-M Research Park, Chennai 600113, India.

Email: {arun.vasan, venkatesh.sarangan}@tcs.com

Abstract—Leak localization is a major issue faced by water
utilities worldwide. Leaks are ideally detected and localized by a
network-wide metering infrastructure. However, in many utilities,
in-network metering is minimally present at just the inlets of sub-
networks called District Metering Area (DMA). We consider the
problem of leak localization using data from a single flow meter
placed at the inlet of a DMA. We use standard time-series based
modeling to detect if a current meter reading is a leak or not, and
if so, to estimate the excess flow. Conventional approaches use
an a-priori fully calibrated hydraulic model to map the excess
flow back to a set of candidate leak locations. However, obtaining
an accurate hydraulic model is expensive and hence, beyond the
reach of many water utilities.
We present an alternate approach that exploits the network
structure and static properties in a novel way. Specifically, we
extend the use of centrality metrics to infrastructure domains and
use these metrics to map from the excess leak flow to the candidate
leak location(s). We evaluate our approach on benchmark water
utility network topologies as well as on real data obtained from an
European water utility. On benchmark topologies, the localization
obtained by our method is comparable to that obtained from a
complete hydraulic model. On a real-world network, we were able
to localize two out of the three leaks whose data we had access to.
Of these two cases, we find that the actual leak location was in the
candidate set identified by our approach; further, the approach
pruned as much as 78% of the DMA locations, indicating a high
degree of localization.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Importance of leaks: Non-revenue Water (NRW), the differ-
ence between the volume of water entering a utility network
and the volume billed to consumers, is a major issue facing
water utilities. The estimated world-wide loss due to NRW is
$14.1 billion per annum. NRW levels (as a percentage of water
supplied) are 15% in the developed world, and 40-50% in the
developing world [1]. Nearly 60% of NRW in the developing
world is due to physical losses (as opposed to faulty metering
and theft), i.e., treated water is lost in the network due to
leaks and overflows at storage tanks. Reducing this loss by
half will allow the utilities to serve an additional 100 million
people with no further withdrawals from natural sources. This
loss reduction will also allow the utilities to save the energy
associated with treating and pumping roughly 8 billion cubic
metres of water. To reduce NRW levels, utilities need to detect
and localize leaks in their distribution networks efficiently.
Leak detection and localization are ideally done using
a widely deployed monitoring infrastructure with real-time
data logging from high-resolution pressure, flow, and acoustic
sensors. If that were the case, all one has to do is successively
balance flows across junctions to identify the lossy links for
even minor leaks. Leaks can further be localized to specific
segments along a link through such infrastructure. Indeed, this
is the case for networks with high monetary value such as oil
and gas.
Present status of instrumentation: Water, on the other hand,
is a relatively inexpensive resource. Consequently, most water
networks are metered only to the extent allowed by the budgets
of utilities. In the absence of any metering at all, there is little a
utility can do about leak detection except respond to customer
complaints or abnormal consumption at head-works.
Our interactions with water utilities in Europe and Asia
reveal that a minimal metering infrastructure does exist in
practice. Many utilities divide their water distribution network
into administrative domains called District Metering Areas
(DMAs)1 . These DMAs are typically metered at an aggregate
level at the inlet and occasionally, at the outlet. Most flow
meters are sampled at a low frequency (e.g., once every 15
minutes.) If the sensed flow value goes beyond a prefixed
threshold, a leak is flagged.
Current localization practices: Post leak detection, a utility
has to localize the leak so that it can be fixed by field personnel.
One approach for leak localization is to use acoustic methods.
In these methods, human operators walk along a pipeline
network with appropriate instruments listening for variation
in the reflected acoustic signal. Clearly, doing this along the
entire length of the network is expensive. Another approach
adopted by utilities is to use a calibrated hydraulic model
to localize the leak. Calibrated hydraulic models supplement
meter data by capturing the dynamics of the network flow,
and help gain insight about network operations. For instance,
a calibrated model of a single pipe would predict the drop in
water pressure across the pipe as a function of the flow using
an experimentally determined roughness coefficient.
To localize a leak, the hydraulic model of the DMA under
consideration is run with several choices of leak locations. The
choice whose simulation results closely match the inlet and
1 In some sense, the DMAs can be considered analogous to the autonomous
systems (ASes) in the Internet.

978-1-4799-3146-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 47

outlet meter data is identified as the leak location. Although
this appears plausible, as we explain later in Section II,
obtaining a well-calibrated network hydraulic model is quite
expensive. Therefore, this too is beyond the reach of many
utilities.
Proposed approach: While several leak detection and local-
ization approaches have been discussed in the literature, they
require either a widely deployed, high resolution monitoring
infrastructure or a calibrated hydraulic model [2], [3]. Our
discussions with water utilities across different geographies
indicate that neither of these is commonly available. Motivated
by this reality, we consider the following question: “Given a
water distribution network with no calibrated hydraulic model
and low-frequency flow logging at a DMA’s inlet, can we detect
and localize major leaks ?” Note that we consider the case of
a flow meter being present only at the inlet because this is the
reality in most networks. Further, real world water utilities are
constrained by their budget and may not have the means to
deploy additional sensors.
We answer this question in the affirmative by proposing
methods for detecting and localizing major leaks. We focus
on scenarios where a water network has only one major leak
at any given time. Real-world data on the duration between
reported leak events (presented in Section VII) confirms this.
Our discussions with water utilities indicate that this is the
most commonly occurring event. Though several sections of a
network could be prone for a major leak, usually the weakest
segment in the network gives way first. This precludes other
weaker sections of the network from caving in. Multiple major
leaks rarely occur unless there is a geography specific event
such as an earthquake.
For ease of reading, henceforth, we refer to major water
leaks as simply leaks in the rest of this paper; we also refer
to them as bursts. Our leak detection method considers the
past history of flow meter values over a time window and
compares the current sample against a prediction made for the
current time step. If the difference is positive and statistically
significant, a leak event is flagged with some confidence
interval. The additional flow due to the leak is also extracted
as the leak signature which is then used for localization.
Leak localization is more challenging than detection for
the following reasons. (i) Relatively speaking, bursts are rare
events and hence, it is difficult to obtain a database of burst
locations and their signatures from past history2 . (ii) Even if
one manages to obtain such a database, the burst signature
for the same location would vary depending on the network
operating conditions. (iii) As there is only one measurement
point (i.e., the inlet flow meter), it is likely that the signatures
of several locations are similar.
We address these challenges in the following way. Our leak
localization approach adopts graph centrality metrics to build
an a priori synthetic database of burst signatures of all possible
locations within a DMA. To generate the database, we exploit
the static structural data of the water network (e.g., records
about the network such as connectivity, diameters and lengths
of pipes, rated power of pumps, and height and capacity of
2 Since hydraulic models may not be available with all utilities, the burst
signatures cannot be synthetically generated.
48
tanks) as opposed to calibrated information such as roughness
coefficients and nodal demands. This database is parametrized
by the operating conditions existing at all possible time instants
at which a burst can happen. The set of probable leak locations
are identified as those whose estimated burst signatures match
closely with the actual leak signature.
Specific contributions of our work include:
• A statistically-based filter based on standard ARIMA
model that extracts the leak signature from the flow
values.
• An empirical analysis of the possible leak signatures
that can be obtained from a single flow meter placed
at a DMA’s inlet. We find that the number of dis-
tinguishable leak signatures can be considerably less
than the number of junctions in the DMA. Specifically,
we show that the number of distinguishable leak
signatures is dependent on the number of strongly
connected components in the network defined in terms
of hydraulic resistance. Our analysis identifies the
extent to which a leak can be localized with a single
flow sensor using any method.
• A current-flow centrality based approach that exploits
a water network’s structure to build a database of
burst signatures of different network locations even
in the absence of hydraulic models. We find that the
leak signatures obtained through our method are as
distinguishable as those obtained by a fully calibrated
hydraulic model with accurate and complete informa-
tion.
We validate our approach on synthetic benchmark water utility
networks as well on real world flow meter/burst data obtained
from an European water utility. We find that our localization
method performs well on both real-world and benchmark
networks. On benchmark topologies, the performance of our
method is comparable to that of those obtained from expensive
hydraulic models. On a real world network, we were able to
localize two out of the three leaks whose data we had access
to. On these two cases, we find that the actual leak location
was in the candidate set identified by our approach; further,
our approach pruned as much as 78% of the DMA locations,
indicating a high degree of localization.
To the best of our knowledge, ours is one of the first
few works to localize leaks in a utility scale water network
using information from a single flow sensor in the absence
of a hydraulic model. We believe that the our methodology is
generic enough to be applied for any resource-flow infrastruc-
ture domain, especially when accurate models are not available
to simulate and understand the infrastructure behavior.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II briefly provides the background for understanding water
networks. Section III discusses our approach for leak detection.
Section IV describes how the network structure can affect
the degree to which a leak can be localized. Section V
discusses our localization methodology. Sections VI and VII
present results on how the proposed leak localization approach
performs on benchmark and real world topologies respectively.
Section VIII discusses related work and Section IX concludes
the paper.
 II. WATER D ISTRIBUTION N ETWORKS
Symbol Meaning
G Water network
E Pipes (edges, links)
V Junctions (vertices, nodes)
A Weighted adjacency matrix of G
di Demand at node i
pi Pressure at node i
Hi Total head at node i
hi Elevation at node i
Ci,j Head gain due to pump along pipe (i, j)
fi,j Flow from i to j
fburst Excess flow through a meter due to burst
e Edge (pipe) e = (i, j)
Le Length of pipe e
Re Radius of pipe e
μe Roughness coefficient of pipe e
ρ Density of water (1 gm/cc)
g Acceleration due to gravity 9.8 m/s2
TABLE I. N OTATION FREQUENTLY USED IN THE PAPER
Water networks distribute water from reservoirs through
pipes (or links) to various locations in a municipality. One
or more tanks function as intermediate buffers within the
network. Pumps boost the ‘head’ of water to either push water
uphill or increase the delivery pressure of water at end points.
Valves regulate the water pressure at network nodes and to
open/close pipes for water flow. Junctions or nodes are points
in the network where different pipes meet. They also represent
end consumers and hence can have demands. The demands
typically vary with the time of day. For a given demand pattern,
the flow values along various pipes in the network is decided
by the underlying topology and Physical laws.
Typically, the demand values at all nodes in the network,
the reservoirs’ capacities and pressures, and the rating of all
pumps in a water network are assumed to be known. The
pressures at all nodes in the network and the flows through all
pipes in the network are to be determined from these inputs.
Using the notation in Table I, the equations that relate the
desired outputs with the inputs can be stated as follows [4]:
• Flow equation: The total flow entering a node i from
all its neighbors Ni is equal to the total flow leaving
it plus the demand di of the node i. In other words,
 flow due to the leak? The estimated burst flow will be used as
∀i ∈ V, di + f (i, j) = 0 (1)
j∈Ni
• Head equation: For any link e = (i, j) ∈ E, the
change in the head along the link can be written as:
Le fe2 × ρg
pi + hi ρg + Ci,j − = pj + hj ρg
μe Re5
where μe represents the pipes roughness coefficient.
The above equation states that the total pressure gain
along any closed loop in the flow network is zero.
This is basically a generalized version of Bernoulli’s
theorem to include frictional losses.
A. Challenges in hydraulic model calibration
From Equations 1 and 2, it can be observed that apart from
the inputs (which includes di ’s), the values of μe ’s should also
be known to determine the pressures and flows. The di ’s and
μe ’s are empirically estimated during the process of hydraulic
model calibration.
In most utility water networks across the globe, customers
are not precisely metered at end-points. Demands are accu-
rately measured only at aggregated levels. Therefore, node-
level demands (di ’s) may not be accurately known at the
required spatio-temporal granularity. Further, as pipes age
and corrode, the roughness of their internal surfaces changes
which affects the amount of head loss along the pipes. The
roughness of a pipe, quantified by the roughness co-efficient
(μe ), needs to be periodically estimated. These co-efficients
can be estimated only when actual values of pressure and
flows at various junctions and pipes are available. Finally,
pump efficiencies affect the hydraulic model’s accuracy. Aging
pumps deviate significantly from manufacturer specifications.
Considerable effort is required in terms of field trials and
parameter fitting to estimate the μe ’s and pump efficiencies.
For example, calibrating a network with few hundreds of
nodes may take 40-60 days of effort by an expert team of
2-4 members [5]. Larger networks require even more effort. A
utility may not have in-house expertise to do such calibration,
thus requiring expensive external consultants. For a network
serving a population of 1 million, hydraulic model maintenance
over a five year period typically costs about $4, 000, 000 [6].
Even approximate models may not be available in developing
economies.
In our work, we employ centrality metrics and exploit
the readily available network information to allow utilities
to expedite burst localization, even in the absence of data
on the μe ’s and di ’s.
Our approach consists of two parts. The first part focuses
on detecting a leak and extracting its signature; the second
leverages the leak signature and the network structure to
localize the leak.
III. L EAK D ETECTION
We now address the question: Given a time-series data for
the inlet flow-loggers of a DMA, can we (i) detect a leak in
the DMA with a confidence? (ii) can we estimate the excess
a signature by the localization module. Note that by detection,
we mean identifying that a leak has happened after it has
happened.
Let Xt denotes the time-series of flow measurements seen
at a meter at the inlet of a DMA. Let Lt ∈ {0, 1} denote the
presence of a leak at time t within this DMA. Our goal is to:
(2) (i) design a mechanism to decide for each time instant t, if a
leak is present, i.e., if Lt = 1, and (ii) quantify the associated
false positive rate. The false negative rate may not be obtained
unless the distribution of the actual leak flow is known.
Nature of the flow signal: Figure 1(a) shows a sample of
the actual flow values observed at the inlet of a DMA in an
European water utility network. The data corresponds to the
flow observed over a period of 30 days, with the values being
sampled every 15 minutes. From the raw flow values, one
can readily notice the non-stationarity. The auto-correlation
function (ACF) plot of the raw signal in Figure 1(b) indicates
the presence of a daily trend since there are sharp peaks at a
lag of 24 hrs (96 samples). When the daily trend is subtracted
out, the ACF plot of the resulting signal in Figure 1(c) shows
49
 Time Series − Flow
1.0
8
0.5
7
Flow m^3/hr
ACF
6
0.0
5
−0.5
4
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Sample Index
(a) Raw flow data. The observed signal is non-
stationary.
Fig. 1. Characteristics of flow values measured by a water utility flow meter.
what is potentially a weekly trend with peaks at a lag of 672
samples.
A naive approach for leak detection: The highest seasonality
trend one could observe in the flow values is over a week or
4 × 24 × 7 = 672 samples. A naive approach to leak detection
could be as follows. One could empirically build distributions
of P[Xt ], for all t mod 672. If a flow sample, say Xk , shows
significant deviation from the mean value according to the
distribution of Xk mod 672 , it could be flagged as a leak.
The main drawback with this approach is that it does not
take in account the local trend variations. For instance, Figure
2(a) gives the distributions of Xt and Xt+1 obtained from
real world flow traces. The probability distribution of Xt+1
given the fact that Xt is high may not be the same as the
original distribution of Xt+1 . Figure 2(a) gives the distribution
of Xt+1 |Xt > β, for some β. As can be seen, this conditional
distribution is quite different from the original distribution. A
sample value that has significant deviation as per the original
distribution of Xt+1 would be considered normal under the
conditional distribution. Consequently, the naive approach can
result in too many false positives.
A. Model Building
We now statistically model the flow values observed at
one meter. We use this model to predict the flow value at
the next time step. If the model is good, the predicted and
actual flow values will be close enough. If there are any
abnormalities in the network (such as leak, meter failure, etc.),
the predicted and actual values will significantly differ. If the
actual value is significantly higher than the predicted value,
we flag a leak. We first difference the signal to remove the
daily and weekly trends. We then fit an auto-regressive (AR)
model of appropriate order to handle the remaining errors.
Once the prediction is made using this auto-regressive model,
we estimate the flow sample value through anti-differencing.
This model captures the local dependencies better than the
naive approach and hence is more accurate.
B. Model Validation
Figure 2(b) shows the time-series generated by our model
versus the actual samples from a real-world meter. The average
relative error in prediction during normal operation is within
9.95%. This 9.95% error is reasonable considering the fact that
it is within the 5% error of the flow meter’s resolution. Figure
ACF plot − showing daily seasonality ACF plot − showing weekly seasonality
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
ACF
0.2
0.0
−0.2
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
(b) The flow values show a daily trend. (c) We see a weekly trend as well.
2(c) shows the Q-Q plot showing the various quantiles of our
model against the quantiles obtained from actual data. The
closeness of the resulting plot to the 45 degree line indicates
high accuracy of our model.
C. Leak Detection
Given the AR model for predicting the flow Xt from the
past history, we can obtain the a priori conditional distribution
P[Xt |Xt ,t ≤t ]. Now, if the flow logger has obtained a sample
X̂t , we want to estimate if the sample is due to a leak being
present at t or not. Consider a small number , 0 <  ≤
0.01. Let x() be the (1 − )th percentile of the distribution
P[Xt |Xt ,t ≤t ], i.e., P[Xt |Xt ,t ≤t > x()] = 1 − . Then we
flag a leak at time t if and only if the sample X̂t > x(). Note
that this leak could have started sometime before t.
A sample corresponding to normal operation falling in the
upper tail of the distribution P[Xt |Xt ,t ≤t ] between [1 − , 1]
would be flagged as a leak. Therefore, the false positive rate of
our approach is precisely . Thus we have a method that can
allow the user to tune the detection of leaks using a threshold
x() on the basis of an acceptable false-positive rate . Further,
the least-squared error estimate of the excess flow that happens
because of a leak observed at time t is given by δ(t) = X̂t −
E[Xt ], where E[.] is the expectation operator.
Consecutive leak alerts: A leak can take several hours to fix.
Consequently, the flow logger would see values that deviate
from the expected distribution across several samples. Suppose
the thresholds that we choose for a sequence of n samples are
1 , 2 , . . . , n , for some n. Then the probability of a series of
n leak alerts being a false positive, α, is given by
   
α = P[ Xi > x(i ) ∩ Xi+1 > x(i+1 ) · · · (3)
 
∩ Xi+n > x(i+n ) ]
Clearly, if a leak is absent, the events Xi > i for consecutive
i’s are positively correlated and their joint probability would
be higher than the product of their marginals. However, when
Xi is flagged as a leak, we do not use the sample to update
the ARIMA model; instead we (recursively) use a sample that
is from the past corresponding to this time-of-day 24 hours
ago under normal operations. Therefore, the events Xi > i
for consecutive i’s become independent in the presence of a
leak. Consequently, the overall false positive rate of flagging
a leak under a sequence of n consecutive individual alerts can
50
 Local history
1.5
X_t
X_{t+1}, 98th percentile=6.8
1.0
X_{t+1}| X_t > 6.47, 98th percentile=7.7
Density
0.5
0.0
4 5 6 7
Flow
(a) Naive approaches may not model the con-
textual information.
Fig. 2. Characteristics of naive approach and proposed approach
be obtained as
α = P[Xi > x(i )] × . . . × P[Xi+n > x(i+n )]
= i × i+1 . . . × i+n .
Clearly α decreases with increasing n.
While we have used an ARIMA model based deviation
approach to detect leak values for simplicity, we note that any
standard outlier detection techniques for time series can be
used [7].
IV. E FFECT OF N ETWORK STRUCTURE
A burst is analogous to an electrical “short circuit”. Specif-
ically, water under high (internal) pressure tries to escape to
a lower external pressure. The amount that escapes is only
limited by the (analogous to electrical) hydraulic resistances
to the excess flow offered by the network on the path from
the reservoir. Formally, the hydraulic resistance of a link is
defined as the ratio of the head drop across a link to the flow
through the link. Hydraulic resistance of a path is the sum of
the individual resistances of the links along the path.
The excess flow due to the burst ultimately gets supplied to
a DMA through its inlet and gets recorded. Clearly, the number
of distinguishable burst flows that can get recorded is equal to
the number of unique short circuit hydraulic resistances offered
by different locations within a DMA.
In the following analyses, we assume that bursts happen
at nodes (i.e., junctions of pipes) in a DMA. This assumption
does not preclude bursts happening at pipes because, a pipe can
logically be divided into multiple segments by placing dummy
nodes along its length. These dummy nodes can act as possible
burst locations.
R A B C
Pressure
Fig. 3. Chain structure
Definition. Let δi (t) be the excess burst flow at time t due to
a burst at node i. Let U = {1, 2, · · · , m} be a set of m nodes
12 Q−Q plot
Observed
11 Predicted(+2 units)
8
10
7
Flow m3/hr
9
6
observed
8
5
7
4
6
5
3
4
2
8 9 0 50 100 150 200 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time predicted
(b) Observed vs. Predicted Flow. (c) Q-Q plot. The plot lies close to the 45◦
line which is an indication of good fit.
in the network. The flows δ1 (t), δ2 (t), · · · , δm (t) are said to
be indistinguishable from each other, if |δi (t) − δj (t)| < ε,
(4) ∀ i, j ∈ U , for some ε > 0. Typically, the value of ε depends
on the the resolution of the inlet flow meter and the variations
expected in the network operating condition at time t.
Consider a simple chain network R-ABCD shown in Figure
3. Let R be the reservoir and the rest be the demand nodes.
Assume that the links AB, BC, and CD have a very low
hydraulic resistance (or a very high hydraulic admittance).
Though the four nodes are spatially separated, in hydraulic
terms, they can be considered as a ‘single’ node. Therefore, if
a burst happens at any of A, B, C, or D, then the short circuit
hydraulic resistance offered by any of these locations to the
reservoir R would be comparable. Consequently, δA , δB , δC ,
and δD may not be distinguishable for any t. In general, two
nodes directly connected by a high admittance link are likely
to have indistinguishable burst flows.
Guided by this observation, we now systematically analyze
nodes within a DMA that are connected by high admittance
links. As per equation 2, a link’s admittance per unit flow
R5
equals Lee μe . Given a DMA, we compute the unit flow
admittance of all the links. We represent the DMA as a digraph
G = (V, E) with the direction of an edge being decided by
the flow direction along that edge. Typically, water does not
circulate in loops in a network; therefore, G will be a directed
acyclic graph (DAG).
We modify this DAG as follows. If the unit flow admittance
of a DMA link is higher than some threshold value, we make
the corresponding edge in the digraph as bidirectional. On this
modified digraph, we determine the various strongly connected
components, S1 , S2 , ..., Sk . Nodes in a strongly connected
component will be connected via high admittance links; hence
D their burst flows are likely to be indistinguishable.
Let γ > 0 be the number of distinguishable excess burst
flows possible across the nodes in the DMA. Higher the γ,
Excess Flow
higher will be the extent to which a leak can be localized. On
an average, the extent of leak localization will be |V |/γ. Given
this, the following relationship can be written:
γ ≤ k + |V | − |{S1 ∪ S2 ∪ · · · Sk }| (5)
In other words, equation 5 establishes the upper bound for the
number of distinguishable burst flows observable in a DMA’s
inlet flow meter. The k term in the bound arises from the
fact that each of the strongly connected component may have
51
distinguishable burst flows. The other terms account for the
distinguishable burst flows from nodes that are not a part of
any of the k strongly connected components.
If the admittance of all the links in the DMA is very
high, then the entire DMA will be one strongly connected
component making γ = 1. On the other hand, if the admittance
of all the links is quite low, we have the degenerate case in
which each node will be a strongly connected component,
making γ = |V |.
V. L EAK L OCALIZATION
The understanding gained thus far can be summarized as
follows: (i) the leak detection module can estimate the excess
flow, δ(t), induced during a burst; (ii) the value of δ(t) depends
on the short circuit hydraulic resistance of the burst location
at the time of burst.
A well calibrated hydraulic model of a DMA can be used
to estimate the excess burst flow induced by various DMA
locations at the time of leak alert. The location(s) whose
estimated burst flow value(s) match with the observed burst
flow would be the probable leak locations. As mentioned
in Section II, obtaining a well calibrated hydraulic model is
expensive and beyond the reach of many utilities in developing
economies. The key question is in the absence of hydraulic
models, can the excess burst flow from various locations be still
estimated? To answer this, we leverage ideas from centrality
analysis of networks. Specifically, we use a customized variant
of the current-flow betweenness centrality.
A. Current-flow centrality
Let G = (V, E) be an electrical network represented as
an undirected graph. Each edge e = (i, j) ∈ E in this graph
has an electrical resistance 1/aij and admittance aij . For e =
/ E, aij = 0. Let A be the weighted adjacency matrix
(i, j) ∈
of G formed by the aij ’s. Let b : V →  be a vector that
indicates where the current externally gets injected or removed
from the network.  A node i is a source if bi > 0 and a sink
if bi < 0. Clearly, i bi = 0. The current that gets injected at
the sources will split along the various incident edges, travel
through various paths, before getting drained at the sinks. The
current flow induces voltages or potentials at the nodes. Let p
and I be the vectors that indicate the vertex potentials and edge
currents. Now, by Kirchoff’s laws, p, b, and A are related as
[8]:
LA .p = b (6)
where LA is the Laplacian of A. Once p is known, I can be
determined as Iij = (pi − pj )aij .
Consider a unit current entering G at node s and leaving
it at node q, i.e., bs = 1, bq = −1, bi = 0, ∀i ∈ / {s, q}.
Current-flow centrality of a link quantifies the average amount
of current that would pass through a link when all possible
s, q pairs in the network are considered. Formally,
 Hz = Hs −
Ie (s, q)
s,q∈V
C(e) = , ∀e ∈ E (7)
(|V | − 1)(|V | − 2)
where Ie (s, q) is the fraction of current flow from s to q
passing through e.
52
B. Application to water networks
Equation 6 assumes that p and I are linearly related. In
the case of a water network, the hydraulic head at a node is
equivalent to the electric potential at a node and the water
flow through pipes is equivalent to the current flow. Unlike
an electrical network, the relation between head and flow is
non-linear as the head loss per unit flow depends on the flow
value. We extend this current flow betweenness centrality
measure to water networks and use it to estimate burst
flows.
Let t be the time instant at which we want to determine the
burst signatures of all the network locations. Let x̂(t) be the
normal non-burst flow value expected at the DMA inlet at time
t; this value can be obtained from the AR model developed in
Section III. Let Γ be the set of all demand nodes in the DMA
and s be the DMA inlet node. We now define the vector b
such that bs = x̂(t) and bi = −x̂(t)/|Γ|, ∀i ∈ Γ.
The entries aij of matrix A are defined as:
 5
Re
aij = Le if e = (i, j) ∈ E (8)
0 if e = (i, j) ∈
/E
where Re and Le are the radius and the length of the pipe
e respectively. In other words, we initially populate matrix
A assuming unit flows and unit roughness coefficients for all
pipes. For these A and b vectors, we estimate the head vector
H and flow vector f using Equation 6. These flow values are
used to revise the admittance matrix A through which newer
flow values are obtained. This fixed point iteration continues
until the flow values converge.
The flow value obtained thus could be considered as a
variant of the current flow centrality metric defined earlier
in Equation 7. The variations include modifications to the b
vector, a non-linear relationship between A and b, and the
absence of any averaging.
The fixed point iteration handles the non-linear relation-
ship between H and f . However, the assumption about the
roughness coefficients of all the pipes being unity remains
uncorrected. To address this issue, we derive an heuristic ap-
proximation for the roughness coefficient μ, while continuing
to assume that it remains identical for all pipes. We believe
that this assumption is reasonable since there is homogeneity
in the pipes within a DMA in terms of their age.
Water utilities typically ensure that the delivery head at any
node is at least greater than or equal to a minimum acceptable
threshold value τ . In most utilities, τ = 15m (i.e., enough head
to support a water column of 15m). Let z be the node with the
highest elevation in the DMA being analyzed. A conservative
estimate for the delivery head at z is τ , i.e., Hz = τ . If Hs is
the head maintained at the DMA’s inlet, from equation 2, we
can write the following:
 
1 
2 Le
f e 5 − hz = τ (9)
μ Re
e∈Psz
where, Psz is the path from inlet s to z with the smallest head
drop, hz is the elevation at z, and fe is the flow value across
edge e at the end of the fixed point iteration. From the above
relation, μ can be calculated once Hs is specified. Once μ is
known, the estimated head values H can be corrected for the 2.5
Relative error for an edge

Relative error: (Δ Flow)/Flow

unity roughness coefficient assumption through a linear scaling 2
of LA in Equation 6.
1.5

C. Burst flow estimation at location v 1

0.5
Assume that the DMA inlet is at a given head Hs . When a
burst occurs inside a DMA at location v, the burst location is 0
0 5 10 15 20 25
exposed to the static head exerted on the pipe by the outside
Iterations
environment, e.g., the weight of the soil above the water pipe. (a) Convergence for one edge
Let this head be h0 . The value of h0 can be determined based 2
on a typical soil composition of the DMA service area, the Avg. relative error for all edges

Relative error: (Δ Flow)/Flow

1.8
pipe burying depth, and v’s elevation from mean sea level. 1.6
1.4
To find the burst flow at time t due to the burst at location 1.2

v, we set the demand at v as bv = Δ + x̂t /|Γ|, for some

1
0.8
Δ > 0. The demands at other nodes are left unchanged at 0.6
x̂t /|Γ|. For this new demand vector b, we recompute f and H 0.4
0.2
as described in Section V-B. If we find that Hv is greater than 0
h0 , we increase bv to a new value by increasing Δ. however, 0 5 10 15 20 25
Iterations
if Hv < h0 , we decrease bv and repeat the process. In other
(b) Avg. convergence for all edges
words, we search for that new demand bv at v such that the
Hv for this demand is comparable to h0 . Clearly, the value Fig. 4. Empirical results showing the convergence of the edge flow values
bv − x̂t /|Γ| is the excess flow that gets induced in the network under the iterative heuristic on a benchmark topology. Though the error in a
particular iteration may slightly increase for one edge, the average error across
due to the burst at v. Hence, bv − x̂t /|Γ| is v’s burst signature all the edges falls monotonically.
for the inlet head Hs .
Standard techniques such as binary search can be adopted The candidate set of leak locations at time t, ζt is defined
to find this value due to the monotonic relationship between as,
 
bv and Hv . Figure 5 gives a consolidated view of the above ζt = {v| ABS Δv (t, Hs ) − δ(t) ≤ λ, ∀Hs } (10)
discussions.
where ABS(x) is the absolute value of x and λ is a proximity
Remarks. The iterative method outlined in Figure 5 re- threshold. Ideally, the size of ζt should be as small as possible
cursively solves a coupled system of non-linear equations with the guarantee that the actual leak location will always be
in H and f . The A−1 matrix in C OMPUTE -H EAD -U SING - present in the candidate set. In our studies, we have set λ to
C ENTRALITY can be considered as a heuristic approximation be 5% of δ(t).
of using a correction that includes the Jacobian (∂H/∂f ). This
matrix is used to obtain the new head vector Hn+1 which in Typically, a leak will continue over several time in-
turn is used to obtain the new flow vector fn+1 . The new stants and hence we will have a series of candidate sets,
flow vector is then used to update the A−1 matrix. While ζt1 , ζt2 , · · · , ζtn . Information from these sets is fused and the
the convergence rate of the iteration can be increased through resultant high likelihood candidate set is chosen as:
the explicit use of the Jacobian, we find that our heuristic 
n
∗
seems to perform satisfactorily in practice as evidenced from ζ = {v | max I(v, ζti )} (11)
v
the convergence rates shown in Figures 4(a) and 4(b). Figure i=1
4(a) shows the convergence for one edge while Figure 4(b)
shows the convergence averaged across all edges. where I(v, ζti ) is an indicator variable that equals 1 if v ∈ ζti
and equals 0 when v ∈ / ζti .

D. Localizing a leak
Recall that the leak detection module will flag a leak
when the flow sample observed at time t, X̂t , is greater than
x(). The excess leak flow estimated at time t from actual
measurement is given by δ(t) = X̂t − E[Xt ].
Let Δv (t, Hs ) = bv − x̂t /|Γ| be the burst signature
estimated for node v at time t for an inlet head value of Hs . If a
pressure logger has not been deployed at the DMA inlet along
with the flow meter, then the actual value of Hs at time t may
not be known. In this case, Hs is considered as a parameter
and Δv (t, Hs ) is computed for different values of Hs . Since
most DMAs are pressure regulated either through a pump or
a water tank at the inlet, the range of values for Hs can be
gathered from the past DMA operations.
Once the high likelihood candidate set is determined, the
actual leak location for carrying out the repair work can be
determined by manually scanning the pipeline in the vicinity of
the candidate set with acoustic sensors. In case the actual leak
location is not in the vicinity of the high likelihood candidate
set, the entire DMA need not be searched. We can form a series
of candidate sets in the decreasing order of the set likelihoods
to guide the scanning.
VI. E VALUATION ON B ENCHMARK T OPOLOGY
We now evaluate our approach on a benchmark topol-
ogy available from the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE). This topology was used for the Battle of Water
Calibration Networks (BWCN)[9]. The BWCN network has
a single reservoir, 7 storage tanks, 388 nodes, 429 links, 11

53
 RESERVOIR
INLET
34 29 31
3 13
B UILD -S IGNATURE -TABLE(G, Hsrc ) 30 17 14
2
 v is a burst location 32
39 40 16 9 24
1 for ( v ∈ V ) 33
10 25
18 15 22
2 do burstSignature[v] ← 28 7 27
35
3 C OMPUTE -E XCESS -F LOW(G, v, Hsrc ) 41 23 37
26
5 20
19
4 6 0 21 36
C OMPUTE -E XCESS -F LOW(G,v, Hsrc ) 12 11 1 38
1 excessFlow ← 0 8
2 normalDemand ← G[v].demand
3 done ← False Fig. 6. Structure of DMA5 from the benchmark topology. This DMA has
4 while not done 43 nodes.
5 do headV ← C OMPUTE -H EAD(G, v)
6 if (headV > h0 )
pumps, 3 pressure reducing valves and one throttle control
7 then oldDemand = G[v].demand
8 G[v].demand ← 2 × oldDemand valve. The network is divided into 5 District Metering Areas
9 elseif (headV < h0 ) (DMAs). For the sake of brevity, we report results of our anal-
10 then avg ← (oldDemand + G[v].demand)/2 ysis for one of the DMAs, namely, DMA-5, whose topology
11 G[v].demand ← avg is given in Figure 6.
12 elseif (headV ≈ h0 )
13 then excessFlow ← G[v].demand - normalDemand Evaluation set-up. The BWCN network and the associated
14 G[v].demand ← normalDemand data do not have any information about burst events. Therefore,
15 done ← T RUE we simulated bursts using the hydraulic model and generated
16 return excessFlow the flow meter data at the inlet of DMA-5 required for our
analysis. To make the deterministic demand patterns of the
C OMPUTE -H EAD(G, v ) BWCN more realistic (as observed in our real-world DMA
 Previous iteration flows data), we added Gaussian noise of mean 0.3 units and standard
1 FP ← {φ} deviation 0.1 to all base nodal demands. To simulate bursts
 Current iteration flows at a node at a specific time, we added an “emitter” to that
2 FC ← {φ} node with an appropriate emitter coefficient. An emitter is a
3 iteration ← 0 water demand point where the water escapes into the outside
4 G ← copy(G) atmospheric pressure and is the standard model of choice for
5 error ← ∞ simulating a leak or a burst. The emitter coefficients were
6 while iteration < τI and error > τC randomly chosen in the range of 2 through 28 to simulate
7 do H ← C OMPUTE -H EAD -U SING -C ENTRALITY(G ) small to large bursts. Higher the emitter coefficient, larger is
8 error ← 0
the size of the burst. For each combination of node id and
9 correction ← {φ}
10 for (i,j) in G.edges time-of-leak, we ran 20 experiments.
11 do FC ← (H[i] − H[j]) × G [i, j].admittance
12 correction[i,j] ← α(FC [i, j] − FP [i, j]) A. Leak detection - Benchmark Topology
13 error ← error + |correction[i, j]|/FP [i, j]
14 error ← error/|G.edges| Figure 7 shows the average percentage detection. Specif-
15 iteration ← iteration + 1 ically, the X-axis shows the id of a node. For a given value
16 for (i,j) in G’.edges of the emitter coefficient (used to simulate the burst), the Y-
17 do G’[i,j].admittance ← axis shows the average percentage detection which is averaged
G[i,j].unitAdmittance
18 FP [i,j]+correction[i,j] over all bursts that occur at a node overall times-of-day. The
19 FP ← FC following observations can be made from the graphs. Above
20 Compute H[v] after linear scaling a certain emitter coefficient value (i.e., leaks above a certain
21 return H[v] size), the leak can be detected almost certainly for most nodes.
There are some nodes (e.g., nodes 1 and 10) for which the
C OMPUTE -H EAD -U SING -C ENTRALITY (G) detection likelihood is low for moderate emitter values and
1 A ← weightedLaplacianMatrix(G,weight=G.admittance) are high only for very high emitter coefficient values. This is
2 for t ∈ G.sinks because these nodes are at the periphery of the DMA (when
3  ← -G[t].demand
do B[t] seen from the inlet), at low pressure, and so, are likely to cause
4 B.append( t ∈ G.sinks G[t].demand) a significant excess flow only if the burst size at these nodes
5 H ← A−1 .B are very high.
6 return H
Figure 8 shows the average time to detect a leak from the
time the leak starts in the network at a node. Consider a given
Fig. 5. Procedural view of extracting the burst signature of node v node id N , a time-of-day t and leak being detected at time
t + τ . The X-axis shows the id of nodes (N ). The Y-axis
shows the average time to detect the leak (τ ), averaged across
all times-of-day (t) when the leak can happen at the node.

54
 emitter2 emitter14 emitter26 DMAs of the benchmark topology. The figure also shows γ  ,
emitter6 emitter18
emitter10 emitter22 the number of distinguishable burst flows in the DMA as per
the proposed centrality based approach. We find that γ  is quite
100 close to γ for all the DMAs - the maximum difference between
90 the two is 1. This shows that our approach does as well as
a fully calibrated hydraulic model in terms of extracting the
80
number of unique burst signatures, i.e., makes efficient use of
% Detection

70 the static information about the network.

60
We evaluate our localization method on all leak events that
50 resulted in a leak detection. Recall that the leak detection
40 method detects a leak and estimates the excess leak flow.
The leak localization method maps this excess leak flow and
30
the time-of-day to likely candidate sets where the leak has
20 occurred. Since we use the candidate set which has the highest
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
likelihood for further analysis, we consider two metrics to
Node id
evaluate our approach: (i) Percentage of time the actual leak
Fig. 7. Averaged (across all times-of-day) detection likelihood for each node location is included in the candidate set; and (ii) The size of
emitter2 emitter14 emitter26 the candidate set as a percentage of the DMA size.
emitter6 emitter18
emitter10 emitter22
100
1.75

% time node is in highest prob set

80
1.5
Avg. Time to detect (hr)

1.25 60

1
40
0.75

0.5 20

0.25
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
0 Node id
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Node id Fig. 10. Percentage of time the burst node is within the high probability set
Fig. 8. Average (across all times-of-day) detection time for each node
100
Accurate Hydraulic Model
The graphs follow a similar trend as the detection likelihood. 90 Centrality
Size of candidate locations in %

80
Small bursts take a significantly longer time-to-detect. This
70
is because the extra flow due to the leak is low and can be
60
picked up only during lean periods of the regular flow pattern. 50
Larger-sized leaks on the other hand are detected fairly quickly 40
except when the occur at a few nodes which again are at the 30
periphery of the network. 20
10

γ - hydraulic model γ’ - centrality 0

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Node id
6 Fig. 11. The size of the high probability set as a percentage of the DMA
5 size
4
3 Figure 10 shows the percentage of times a leak location
2 is included in the candidate set with the highest likelihood.
1 Specifically, the X-axis shows the node id where the burst
0 occurs. The Y-axis shows the average probability that the node
DMA1 DMA2 DMA3 DMA4 DMA5 is in the candidate set with the highest likelihood; the averaging
is over all times-of-day. As can be seen, for bursts occurring at
Fig. 9. γ and γ  for different DMAs in the benchmark topology. Results
show that the proposed localization approach can potentially match a well most nodes, the node is included in the candidate set. Nodes
calibrated hydraulic model. 2,13, and 14 are consistently not included in the candidate set.
This is because their burst flows are under-estimated by our
B. Leak localization - benchmark topology centrality-based model when compared with their actual burst
flows. So, the inverse mapping of the actual burst flows at
Before we study the efficacy of the proposed approach in these nodes points to a different set of nodes.
localizing leaks, we quantify the bounds of localization for
this DMA as discussed in Section IV. Figure 9 shows the We also studied the relationship between a node’s distance
actual number of distinguishable burst flows, γ, across various from the inlet flow meter with the degree of localization

55
possible for a leak at that node. The candidate set size showed a
negative correlation of 0.40 with the nodal distance. Since this
is a weak correlation, we conclude that a node’s distance from
the meter may not have much influence on the localization.
Figure 11 shows the size of the candidate set as a percent-
age of the DMA size. The lower the percentage, the better
the localization is. We compare our localization with the best
possible localization with one meter using a fully calibrated
hydraulic model with perfect information. As can be seen, our
method’s localization is close to the hydraulic model in many
cases.
C. Comparison with approximate hydraulic models
We compare the performance of our centrality based lo-
calization method with that of approximate hydraulic models.
By an approximate hydraulic model, we refer to a model in
which the roughness coefficients μe ’s of the network pipes are
not accurately estimated. In our experiments, we assign the
same μe value to all the pipes in the network and observe
the localization set for various leak locations. We repeat this
experiment for different μe values and obtain the average
localization performance.
We vary μe from 90 units (corresponding to a new pipe)
to 65 (corresponding to an aged pipe), in decreasing steps
of 5. The best and average case localization performance of
the approximate model across these μe values is shown in
Figure 12 using the cumulative distribution function (cdf).
The cdf F (x) shows the fraction of leak locations whose
candidate set’s cardinality is less than or equal to a given size
x. The performance of the centrality method is also shown
for reference. The average size of the candidate set of the
approximate method in the best and average cases are 29%
and 58% of the DMA size respectively. The average size of
the candidate set in the centrality method is 46% of the DMA
size. We also observed that the localization performance of the
approximate model was sensitive to the μe values. The size of
the candidate set (averaged across all leak locations) varied
significantly from 29% to 83% of the DMA size as the μe
values were varied.
Empirical CDF
1
0.8
0.6
F(x)
0.4
Centrality
0.2 Approx. Model − Avg
Approx Model. − Best
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 activities were not logged in the DMA’s WMIS. As our leak
Search Size (as a fraction of network size)
Fig. 12. The best case performance of approximate models can be better
than that of the centrality approach. However, their average performance is
poorer.
While one can attempt to use the approximate model that
gives the smallest candidate set, picking that useful approxi-
mate model(s) for leak localization among the various options
cannot happen until after a long sequence of burst events
are manually localized. Further, an approximate model that
56
22 Flow
20 Durn. 6
Leak flow(m3/hr)
18
Duration (hrs)
16 5
14 4
12
10 3
8
2
6
4 1
1 2 3 4 5 6
Burst ID
Fig. 13. Leak durations and flows in DMA-2 as measured from one metered
inlet
performs satisfactorily for one DMA need not do so for other
DMAs. The proposed centrality based approach, on the other
hand, can be used readily for any DMA and gives a better
average performance than the approximate hydraulic models.
VII. E VALUATION ON REAL - WORLD DATA
We now present the results of our analysis on a real-world
DMAs for a water utility in Europe. Specifically, we obtained
flow meter data for a DMA. This DMA had one metered
inlet and 56 nodes. Data was available as the flow-rate over
15 minute intervals for a period of 21 months. To validate
our detection and localization, we also obtained logs from
the WMIS (Workforce Management Information System) that
records any reported leaks and repairs.
A. Leak detection in real-world DMA
Over the 21 month period, this DMA witnessed 6 water
leak events. Out of the 6 leaks reported in the WMIS, our
model is able to identify 3. For these 3 leaks, the leak duration
and excess flow are shown in Figure 13. Analysis of the
flow values for the 3 undetected leaks showed that the flows
during the reported leaks were within the statistical bounds of
normal operation; hence our leak detection method could not
detect these leaks. Further, fact-checking with field personnel
confirmed that these events involved minor links which did
not have significant flows to begin with. These were the leaks
that happened in smaller pipes that were almost at the farthest
periphery of the DMA. Consequently, these leaks had little
impact on the flow meter and hence could not be detected.
Our leak detection method also detected some events which
were not logged in the WMIS. For these events, the inlet flow
meter values showed a reduced value and was hence flagged as
abnormal by our leak detection module. Our discussions with
field personnel revealed that the reduced values were due to
maintenance activity done at an upstream DMA; hence these
detection method is strictly based on statistical modeling of
the local flow samples, it can give rise to false positives due
to such exogenous factors.
B. Leak localization in real-world DMA
Of the 3 detected leaks in DMA-2, we were able to localize
2. The two events were localized to be within 22.5% and
28.6% of the DMA’s size (as opposed to only knowing that the
leak happened somewhere within 100% of the DMA’s size).
 (a) Burst event 1
Fig. 14. The candidate set (in dots) identified by our approach and the actual burst location overlaid on top of a real world DMA’s map.
The average pipeline distance between the nearest neighbor in
the candidate set and the actual burst location is 148.45m for
event-1 and 126.7m for the event-2. The candidate sets and the
actual burst location for these two events are shown in Figure
14.
The third event (with burst ID 4) that our method missed
happened in a minor communication pipe which is pressure
reduced (by a valve). Consequently it has too small a burst
flow magnitude to be precisely localized.
VIII. R ELATED W ORK
Outlier detection: There is an appreciable body of literature
on outlier detection in wireless sensor networks [10], [11],
[12], [13], [14]. The objective of these works is to detect
global outliers based on the data collected by all the sensors
in a wireless sensor network. These works propose different
in-network processing techniques based on local information
to conserve network bandwidth and energy in the sensor
nodes. Considerable work has also been done in the context
of centralized and distributed anomaly detection, – [15], [16],
[17] and the references therein. These are more suited for
off-line data mining. In this paper, we are interested in on-
line detection of outliers in a time series emanating from a
single sensor node. Therefore, very little in-network distributed
processing and inter-node communication are required. For
simplicity, in this work, we use a standard ARIMA model
based deviation approach for detecting outliers. We note that
other outlier detection techniques for time series [7] can also
be used.
Leak localization in water utility networks: Leak localiza-
tion in water networks has been studied in various works with
each assuming the availability of certain data. Reference [2]
proposes a wavelet based analysis to detect and localize bursts
using data from pressure sensors. This method assumes a dense
deployment of sensors that sample the pressure signal at a high
rate. Localization is achieved based on the arrival time of the
pressure transient resulting from a pipe burst event. However,
not all real world water utility networks are instrumented to the
extent required by this approach which limits its applicability.
There are also other approaches [18], [19], [20] that local-
ize leaks based on the pressure data sampled at a high rate.
These have either been validated on single pipes [19], [20]
or assume that the network demand does not vary much with
time [18]. Clearly, these approaches are not applicable in the
context of a real life water distribution network.
57
(b) Burst event 2
Reference [3] proposes a leak localization methodology
based on Bayesian system identification methodology. This
approach takes into account the errors involved in measurement
and hydraulic modeling. It also associates an uncertainty with
the estimated leak location and magnitude. However, this
approach assumes that the a priori error distribution in the
hydraulic model parameters is known, i.e., in other words,
it assumes that the hydraulic model is calibrated and the
calibration errors are known. As we have seen before, not all
utilities can afford to obtain this information.
Researchers have proposed approaches to automatically
track and deploy sensor nodes in pipeline networks [21], [22].
These can be leveraged to deploy sensors in water distribution
networks to increase the leak localization resolution. In this
paper, we take cognizance of the fact that real world water
utilities are budget constrained and hence may not have re-
sources to deploy additional sensors – the only sensors that
are available are those present at the DMA inlets.
Centrality analysis of networks: Centrality measures have
been widely used to analyze social networks. They are often
used to model information or commodity flow [23], find
influential actors [24], and to study the spread of epidemics
[25]. More recently, centrality measures have also been used
to study the uncertainty in social networks among others [26].
Centrality measures have also been used to study infras-
tructure networks too. Reference [27] analyzes the topological
structures of power grids and shows that grid topologies are
different from that of random graphs and small world net-
works. It also proposed an electrical centrality measure based
on the impedance matrix and used this centrality measure to
explain why a few number of highly connected bus failures can
cause cascading effects in power grids which was refined in
[28]. Reference [29] uses centrality analysis along with other
tools to characterize the impact of hurricanes on the reliability
of electrical grids.
In the context of water networks, reference [30] analyzes
the vulnerability of a water network to get disconnected based
on the connectivity information. Centrality metrics have also
been used to identify strategic sensor placement locations for
detecting contamination in a water network [31].
To the best of our knowledge, the issue of localizing major
leaks in water distribution networks using only one flow sensor
in the absence of any hydraulic model has not been addressed
before. Our work complements the existing body of knowledge
under both of the above mentioned areas by showing that
through appropriate customization, centrality analysis can help
localize leaks in water distribution networks.
IX. C ONCLUSIONS
We considered the problem of leak localization using data
from a single flow meter placed at the inlet of a DMA in water
utility networks. We used time-series based modeling to detect
if a current meter reading is a leak or not, and if so, to estimate
the excess flow. Conventional leak localization approaches use
an expensive hydraulic model to map the excess flow back
to a candidate leak location. However, obtaining an accurate
hydraulic model is expensive and hence, beyond the reach of
many water utilities. We presented an alternate approach that
exploits the network structure and static properties in a novel
way. We extended the use of centrality metrics to infrastructure
domains and used them to map the candidate leak location(s)
from the excess leak flow. We evaluated our approach on
benchmark water utility network topologies as well as on real
data obtained from an European water utility. On benchmark
topologies, the performance of our method was found to be
comparable to solutions obtained from expensive hydraulic
models. On a real world network, we were able to localize
two out of the three leaks whose data we had access to. On
these two cases, we find that the actual leak location was in the
candidate set identified by our approach; further, our approach
pruned as much as 78% of the DMA locations, indicating
a high degree of localization. Presently, we are working to
extend this approach to cases where (a) the flow information
is supplemented by pressure data, and (b) additional meters
are sparsely deployed inside the DMA.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers and our
shepherd Dr. Niki Trigoni. Their valuable suggestions have
significantly improved the paper.
R EFERENCES
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A. Whittle, “Wavelet-based burst event detection and localization in
water distribution systems,” Signal Processing Systems, vol. 72, no. 1,
pp. 1–16, 2013.
[3] Z. Poulakis, D. Valougeorgis, and C. Papadimitriou, “Leakage detection
in water pipe networks using a bayesian probabilistic framework,”
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