Direct assessment of background leakage levels for individual district metered areas (DMAs) using correspondence of demand characteristics between DMAs

Abstract

Abstract This paper proposes a new approach to rank a group of district metered areas (DMAs) in terms of background and unreported leakage rate and to quantify background/unreported leakage levels for individual DMAs in this group. This is done using an extension of the comparison of flow pattern distributions or CFPD method. The approach presented is based on an assumption of similarity in demand behavior between different DMAs. It requires no other data than net inflow timeseries for the DMAs or supply areas under consideration, and no assumptions other than that of similarity of demand. As such, it provides a low-data-requirements method for the evaluation of background and unreported leakage that does not share underlying assumptions with the commonly used mininum night flow method and may potentially present a supplement or alternative to it. The approach is validated using numerical simulations and applied to flow data of a set of DMAs from the Netherlands.