Water Pipeline Leakage Detection Based on Machine Learning and Wireless Sensor Networks

The detection of water pipeline leakage is important to ensure that water supply networks can operate safely and conserve water resources. To address the lack of intelligent and the low efficiency of conventional leakage detection methods, this paper designs a leakage detection method based on machine learning and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The system employs wireless sensors installed on pipelines to collect data and utilizes the 4G network to perform remote data transmission. A leakage triggered networking method is proposed to reduce the wireless sensor network’s energy consumption and prolong the system life cycle effectively. To enhance the precision and intelligence of leakage detection, we propose a leakage identification method that employs the intrinsic mode function, approximate entropy, and principal component analysis to construct a signal feature set and that uses a support vector machine (SVM) as a classifier to perform leakage detection. Simulation analysis and experimental results indicate that the proposed leakage identification method can effectively identify the water pipeline leakage and has lower energy consumption than the networking methods used in conventional wireless sensor networks

Detection and on-line prediction of leak magnitude in a gas pipeline using an acoustic method and neural network data processing

Considering the importance of monitoring pipeline systems, this work presents the development of a technique to detect gas leakage in pipelines, based on an acoustic method, and on-line prediction of leak magnitude using artificial neural networks. On-line audible noises generated by leakage were obtained with a microphone installed in a 60 m long pipeline. The sound noises were decomposed into sounds of different frequencies: 1 kHz, 5 kHz and 9 kHz. The dynamics of these noises in time were used as input to the neural model in order to determine the occurrence and the leak magnitude. The results indicated the great potential of the technique and of the developed neural network models. For all on-line tests, the models showed 100% accuracy in leak detection, except for a small orifice (1 mm) under 4 kgf/cm² of nominal pressure. Similarly, the neural network models could adequately predict the magnitude of the leakages.14515

Water Pipeline Leakage Detection Based on Machine Learning and Wireless Sensor Networks

The detection of water pipeline leakage is important to ensure that water supply networks can operate safely and conserve water resources. To address the lack of intelligent and the low efficiency of conventional leakage detection methods, this paper designs a leakage detection method based on machine learning and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The system employs wireless sensors installed on pipelines to collect data and utilizes the 4G network to perform remote data transmission. A leakage triggered networking method is proposed to reduce the wireless sensor network’s energy consumption and prolong the system life cycle effectively. To enhance the precision and intelligence of leakage detection, we propose a leakage identification method that employs the intrinsic mode function, approximate entropy, and principal component analysis to construct a signal feature set and that uses a support vector machine (SVM) as a classifier to perform leakage detection. Simulation analysis and experimental results indicate that the proposed leakage identification method can effectively identify the water pipeline leakage and has lower energy consumption than the networking methods used in conventional wireless sensor networks

Asset Management Tools for Sustainable Water Distribution Networks

Water Distribution Network (WDN) is the most important element in water supply systems. According to the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA), there are more than 112,000 kilometers of water mains in Canada and their replacement cost is estimated to be $34 billion. Since majority of pipelines are frequently above 100 years old, they are prone to failure and outbreaks of disease derivable to drinking water are inevitable. Breakage in water infrastructure can result in disruptions and damage to other surrounding infrastructure such as road networks or structures. Moreover, unscheduled emergency rehabilitation works can cause interruption to traffic, households and businesses. Therefore, it is important to assess the unknown condition of WDNs to find their respective rate of deterioration in order to prevent disastrous failures or sudden shutdowns. Determining pipe condition through cost-effective assessments will grant very poor condition pipes to be considered first in order to avoid related risk and devastating failures. The problem here is that in most cases, there are limited data about condition of water mains due to the underground location of the pipelines and their restricted access. Several pipes were installed 100 years ago and they have not been examined until a problem occurred. An extensive literature review shows the absence of comprehensive and generalized maintenance model for scheduling the rehabilitation and replacement of individual pipelines in the whole network based on their remaining useful life. Previous research efforts concentrated mostly on developing models, which utilize long-term data and consider solely the pipe segments not the whole network. Since pipe segments are connected together, the performance of one pipe affect the performance of other pipes in the neighborhood. This is the reason that pipes should be considered as a network rather than individual pipeline. This shows the need for a model which could forecast the behavior of each pipeline and the whole network based on available data simultaneously. This study aims to develop a model that can predict remaining useful life to optimize the needed intervention plans based on the available budget. For this purpose, a statistical condition model is developed which utilizes characteristics of a pipeline to predict its condition. In this model, Delphi study identifies the most important factors affecting deterioration of water pipelines at first, through three rounds of questionnaires sent to selected experts. The findings show that important factors are mainly physical factors such as pipe age, pipe material, etc. After that, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Entropy Shannon are employed to prioritize the selected factors in previous step and calculate their weights based on their relative importance. Results reveal that pipe installation, age and material are the most effective parameters in deterioration. These weights are used to find the condition index of the pipeline from pipe characteristics, soil and water properties. Upon determining the condition index, the remaining useful life is estimated using the developed artificial neural network (ANN). Ultimately, the budget is allocated efficiently and different repair and replacement strategies are scheduled based on the remaining useful life and breakage rate of the pipelines utilizing the developed near optimum Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based model. Data of the water distribution network of the city of Montréal is used to develop, train and validate the developed models. Results indicate that 30.7 km of the pipelines of Montreal should be replaced in the next 20 years and 2610 km are in need of both major and minor rehabilitations. This research proposes a framework for optimized replacement and maintenance plans based on the remaining useful life and condition of the pipelines which will help operators for efficient budget allocation and better management of needed intervention plans

Enabling Resilience in Cyber-Physical-Human Water Infrastructures

Rapid urbanization and growth in urban populations have forced community-scale infrastructures (e.g., water, power and natural gas distribution systems, and transportation networks) to operate at their limits. Aging (and failing) infrastructures around the world are becoming increasingly vulnerable to operational degradation, extreme weather, natural disasters and cyber attacks/failures. These trends have wide-ranging socioeconomic consequences and raise public safety concerns. In this thesis, we introduce the notion of cyber-physical-human infrastructures (CPHIs) - smart community-scale infrastructures that bridge technologies with physical infrastructures and people. CPHIs are highly dynamic stochastic systems characterized by complex physical models that exhibit regionwide variability and uncertainty under disruptions. Failures in these distributed settings tend to be difficult to predict and estimate, and expensive to repair. Real-time fault identification is crucial to ensure continuity of lifeline services to customers at adequate levels of quality. Emerging smart community technologies have the potential to transform our failing infrastructures into robust and resilient future CPHIs.In this thesis, we explore one such CPHI - community water infrastructures. Current urban water infrastructures, that are decades (sometimes over a 100 years) old, encompass diverse geophysical regimes. Water stress concerns include the scarcity of supply and an increase in demand due to urbanization. Deterioration and damage to the infrastructure can disrupt water service; contamination events can result in economic and public health consequences. Unfortunately, little investment has gone into modernizing this key lifeline.To enhance the resilience of water systems, we propose an integrated middleware framework for quick and accurate identification of failures in complex water networks that exhibit uncertain behavior. Our proposed approach integrates IoT-based sensing, domain-specific models and simulations with machine learning methods to identify failures (pipe breaks, contamination events). The composition of techniques results in cost-accuracy-latency tradeoffs in fault identification, inherent in CPHIs due to the constraints imposed by cyber components, physical mechanics and human operators. Three key resilience problems are addressed in this thesis; isolation of multiple faults under a small number of failures, state estimation of the water systems under extreme events such as earthquakes, and contaminant source identification in water networks using human-in-the-loop based sensing. By working with real world water agencies (WSSC, DC and LADWP, LA), we first develop an understanding of operations of water CPHI systems. We design and implement a sensor-simulation-data integration framework AquaSCALE, and apply it to localize multiple concurrent pipe failures. We use a mixture of infrastructure measurements (i.e., historical and live water pressure/flow), environmental data (i.e., weather) and human inputs (i.e., twitter feeds), combined and enhanced with the domain model and supervised learning techniques to locate multiple failures at fine levels of granularity (individual pipeline level) with detection time reduced by orders of magnitude (from hours/days to minutes). We next consider the resilience of water infrastructures under extreme events (i.e., earthquakes) - the challenge here is the lack of apriori knowledge and the increased number and severity of damages to infrastructures. We present a graphical model based approach for efficient online state estimation, where the offline graph factorization partitions a given network into disjoint subgraphs, and the belief propagation based inference is executed on-the-fly in a distributed manner on those subgraphs. Our proposed approach can isolate 80% broken pipes and 99% loss-of-service to end-users during an earthquake.Finally, we address issues of water quality - today this is a human-in-the-loop process where operators need to gather water samples for lab tests. We incorporate the necessary abstractions with event processing methods into a workflow, which iteratively selects and refines the set of potential failure points via human-driven grab sampling. Our approach utilizes Hidden Markov Model based representations for event inference, along with reinforcement learning methods for further refining event locations and reducing the cost of human efforts.The proposed techniques are integrated into a middleware architecture, which enables components to communicate/collaborate with one another. We validate our approaches through a prototype implementation with multiple real-world water networks, supply-demand patterns from water utilities and policies set by the U.S. EPA. While our focus here is on water infrastructures in a community, the developed end-to-end solution is applicable to other infrastructures and community services which operate in disruptive and resource-constrained environments

Exploring the optimal potential of transient reflection method through mel-frequency ceptrums coefficient and artificial neural network for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems

Water pipeline systems are critical infrastructures that provide potable water to communities. The design and operation of these systems are complex and require careful consideration of various factors, such as system reliability. Regular maintenance and inspection of pipelines and other components are necessary to prevent leaks and ensure that the system operates effectively. The efficient detection and accurate estimation of leaks in water distribution systems are crucial for maintaining the integrity and functionality of the infrastructure. This research aims to unleash the full potential of the transient reflection method through the integration of Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems. By leveraging the combined power of signal processing and machine learning, this study aim to advance the state-of-the-art methodologies for leak detection and size estimation, providing more accurate and efficient approaches based on transient reflection method. The objectives of this research are to explores the application of MFCC as a signal processing technique to extract vital information from the transient reflection signals. The transient reflection signals carry valuable insights into the characteristics of the water distribution system and can aid in identifying leaks. Furthermore to investigate and select significant features derived from the transient reflection signals that reflect the nature of leak size. Finally, is to develop and validate an ANN-based model for leak size estimation that harnesses the power of the extracted TRM features. To achieve these objectives, extensive experimentation and analysis will be conducted using transient reflection method obtained from laboratory scale water distribution systems. The data will be collected from various sizes of leaks. The collected dataset will serve as the foundation for training and validating the developed ANN model. Performance evaluation metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and mean squared error, will be utilized to assess the effectiveness and reliability of the leak detection and size estimation technique. The expected outcomes of this research include advancements in leak detection and size estimation techniques in water distribution systems. The integration of MFCC and ANN techniques has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of leak detection, leading to timely identification and mitigation of leaks. The developed estimation model can aid in assessing the severity of leaks, enabling more effective allocation of resources for repair and maintenance activities. Ultimately, the findings of this research will contribute to the enhancement of water distribution system management, promoting water conservation and minimizing the adverse impacts of leaks on infrastructure and the environment. In conclusion, this research endeavors to unleash the full potential of the transient reflection method through the integration of MFCC and ANN techniques for leak detection and size estimation in water distribution systems. By leveraging signal processing and machine learning, this study aims to advance the state-of-the-art methodologies and provide more accurate and efficient approaches to address the challenges associated with leak detection and size estimation. The outcomes of this research have the potential to significantly benefit water management authorities, utilities, and researchers working in the field of water distribution system management and conservation

Adaptive swarm optimisation assisted surrogate model for pipeline leak detection and characterisation.

Pipelines are often subject to leakage due to ageing, corrosion and weld defects. It is difficult to avoid pipeline leakage as the sources of leaks are diverse. Various pipeline leakage detection methods, including fibre optic, pressure point analysis and numerical modelling, have been proposed during the last decades. One major issue of these methods is distinguishing the leak signal without giving false alarms. Considering that the data obtained by these traditional methods are digital in nature, the machine learning model has been adopted to improve the accuracy of pipeline leakage detection. However, most of these methods rely on a large training dataset for accurate training models. It is difficult to obtain experimental data for accurate model training. Some of the reasons include the huge cost of an experimental setup for data collection to cover all possible scenarios, poor accessibility to the remote pipeline, and labour-intensive experiments. Moreover, datasets constructed from data acquired in laboratory or field tests are usually imbalanced, as leakage data samples are generated from artificial leaks. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers the benefits of providing detailed and accurate pipeline leakage modelling, which may be difficult to obtain experimentally or with the aid of analytical approach. However, CFD simulation is typically time-consuming and computationally expensive, limiting its pertinence in real-time applications. In order to alleviate the high computational cost of CFD modelling, this study proposed a novel data sampling optimisation algorithm, called Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimisation Assisted Surrogate Model (PSOASM), to systematically select simulation scenarios for simulation in an adaptive and optimised manner. The algorithm was designed to place a new sample in a poorly sampled region or regions in parameter space of parametrised leakage scenarios, which the uniform sampling methods may easily miss. This was achieved using two criteria: population density of the training dataset and model prediction fitness value. The model prediction fitness value was used to enhance the global exploration capability of the surrogate model, while the population density of training data samples is beneficial to the local accuracy of the surrogate model. The proposed PSOASM was compared with four conventional sequential sampling approaches and tested on six commonly used benchmark functions in the literature. Different machine learning algorithms are explored with the developed model. The effect of the initial sample size on surrogate model performance was evaluated. Next, pipeline leakage detection analysis - with much emphasis on a multiphase flow system - was investigated in order to find the flow field parameters that provide pertinent indicators in pipeline leakage detection and characterisation. Plausible leak scenarios which may occur in the field were performed for the gas-liquid pipeline using a three-dimensional RANS CFD model. The perturbation of the pertinent flow field indicators for different leak scenarios is reported, which is expected to help in improving the understanding of multiphase flow behaviour induced by leaks. The results of the simulations were validated against the latest experimental and numerical data reported in the literature. The proposed surrogate model was later applied to pipeline leak detection and characterisation. The CFD modelling results showed that fluid flow parameters are pertinent indicators in pipeline leak detection. It was observed that upstream pipeline pressure could serve as a critical indicator for detecting leakage, even if the leak size is small. In contrast, the downstream flow rate is a dominant leakage indicator if the flow rate monitoring is chosen for leak detection. The results also reveal that when two leaks of different sizes co-occur in a single pipe, detecting the small leak becomes difficult if its size is below 25% of the large leak size. However, in the event of a double leak with equal dimensions, the leak closer to the pipe upstream is easier to detect. The results from all the analyses demonstrate the PSOASM algorithm's superiority over the well-known sequential sampling schemes employed for evaluation. The test results show that the PSOASM algorithm can be applied for pipeline leak detection with limited training datasets and provides a general framework for improving computational efficiency using adaptive surrogate modelling in various real-life applications

Application of software and hardware-based technologies in leaks and burst detection in water pipe networks: a literature review

With the rise of smart water cities, water resource management has become increasingly important. The increase in the use of intelligent leak detection technologies in the water, gas, oil, and chemical industries has led to a significant improvement in safety, customer, and environmental results, and management costs. The aim of this review article is to provide a comprehensive overview of the application of software and hardware-based technologies in leak detection and bursts in water pipeline networks. This review aims to investigate the existing literature on the subject and to analyse the key leak detection systems in the water industry. The novelty of this review is the comprehensive analysis of the literature on software and hardware-based technologies for leak and burst detection in water pipe networks. Overall, this review article contributes to understanding the latest developments and challenges in the application of software- and hardware-based technologies for leak and burst detection in water pipe networks, and serves as a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, and practitioners working in the field of water distribution systems

Advanced Fault Diagnosis and Health Monitoring Techniques for Complex Engineering Systems

Over the last few decades, the field of fault diagnostics and structural health management has been experiencing rapid developments. The reliability, availability, and safety of engineering systems can be significantly improved by implementing multifaceted strategies of in situ diagnostics and prognostics. With the development of intelligence algorithms, smart sensors, and advanced data collection and modeling techniques, this challenging research area has been receiving ever-increasing attention in both fundamental research and engineering applications. This has been strongly supported by the extensive applications ranging from aerospace, automotive, transport, manufacturing, and processing industries to defense and infrastructure industries