How to increase the reliability of assessment of apparent water losses in water supply systems?

Abstract

Water losses are an important indicator of the condition of the water supply system. The goal of every water company is to reduce as much as possible the amounts of non-revenue water. Significant research has been conducted and various tools and methods have been developed to estimate the components of real water losses, while uncertainty of apparent water losses componets remained high. The paper proposes a methodology for determining apparent and real water losses in the water supply system, with an emphasis on apparent water losses estimations. Monte Carlo calculation algorithm is used to evaluate the uncertainty of the obtained results. The methodology for determining apparent and real water losses was applied on the example of the city of Požarevac (central Serbia), both for the entire system and at DMA level. It was concluded that the proposed methodology can significantly increase the reliability of the estimation of apparent water losses.