Evides are a Dutch utility providing drinking water to 2.5 million household and business customers in Zeeland, in the southwest of the Netherlands. The utility met with Syrinix to discuss how a pressure monitoring project could be implemented, with a clear objective to discover if transient monitoring could be used not only to locate and detect bursts but feed a targeted operational response.
The project began with the selection of monitoring sites using the Syrinix deployment planning tool, which estimates the transient monitoring coverage achieved by a set of proposed deployment locations. Additionally, the tool predicts the network response (reported transient amplitudes) to a set of simulated events, which gives the client an indication of the range of events that will be captured given the proposed installation sites. This allows the selection of installation sites to be refined to give the level of coverage required by the client.
Following deployment within the district metered area (DMA), events of varying amplitude were simulated at multiple hydrant locations by introducing a fast flow change. The pressure wave from a simulated burst travels around the DMA and is detected by multiple time synchronised PIPEMINDER devices. Each one detects the event using its S3 scoring algorithm and immediately transmits high sample rate data over the cellular network to RADAR, Syrinix’s cloud-based data analytics platform.
RADAR automatically analyses the data from each of the multiple sensors and determines the exact onset of the pressure wave at each monitor. Onsets from multiple sites are then grouped together into an event and the event source location calculated using Syrinix’s triangulation algorithm.
“Evides performed various burst simulations on different locations and with different impacts. Every test phase was followed by an evaluation with the Syrinix team to discuss the results and plan the next steps. The final tests, which were run completely ‘blind’, showed the expected results, with a clear relation between events, event size and accuracy of localisation. The advantage of even a rough location can be very valuable in our operational response.”
-Henk De Kater, Asset Management, Evides
This project is continuing with Evides as they work towards transient measurements with triangulation in areas with large industrial users and for burst detection in more rural areas.
