The existing leakage assessment methods are not accurate and timely, making it difficult to meet the needs of water companies. In this paper, a methodology based on Independent Component Analysis with Reference (ICA-R) algorithm was proposed to give an more accurate estimation of leakage discharge in multi-leaks water distribution network without considering the specific individuality of one single leak. The proposed algorithm has been improved is improved to prevent error convergence in multi-leak pipe networks. Then an example EPANET model and a physical experimental platform were built to simulate and evaluate the flow in multi-leak WDNs, and the leakage flow rate is calculated by improved ICA-R algorithm and FastICA algorithm. The simulation results are shown the improved ICA-R algorithm has better performanc
