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Efficiency and Control of Water Networks
Pinpointing where water losses originate in the network is one of the most costly challenges for water utilities. Across tens or hundreds of kilometers of pipeline, an increase in losses—due to leaks, illegal connections, or operational inefficiencies—is often detected too late and investigated through slow, costly manual processes, with no certainty about which specific sector caused the problem.
Online sectorization solves this by dividing the distribution network into District Metered Areas (DMAs): defined hydrometric sectors that are continuously monitored using flow macro-meters, pressure sensors, and a SCADA system integrated with a digital analytics platform. Unlike traditional sectorization—assessed through periodic water balances and field surveys—this approach delivers real-time behavior for each sector, enabling the detection of anomalous flow or pressure variations at the moment they occur.
The operational impact is measurable: narrowing the search for leaks down to specific sectors reduces non-revenue water, pumping and pressure can be optimized based on each zone's actual behavior, and efficiency indicators become comparable across sectors and over time. This shifts loss management from a reactive process to a data-driven one, directly impacting energy costs, water produced, and network maintenance.
Utilities that implement online sectorization don't just reduce losses immediately; they turn each sector into a measurable management unit, laying the groundwork for predictive leak-detection models and network-wide energy optimization.
Managing a water distribution network as a single undifferentiated block makes it difficult to identify where losses originate and how efficient operations actually are in each area of the city. Online district metering solves this by dividing the network into District Metered Areas (DMAs) — hydraulically delimited sectors with known inflows and outflows — and continuously monitoring each one, turning loss control and pressure management into a real-time, data-driven process.
How it works.
Each sector is physically delimited using sectioning valves and instrumented with bulk flow meters at its inlet and outlet points, along with pressure sensors at representative points in the network. This equipment connects to a local RTU that transmits data via cellular telemetry, radio, or fiber to a central SCADA system. Running on top of this data foundation, a digital platform continuously calculates the sector's water balance, minimum night flow — a key indicator for estimating leakage — and pressure indices, comparing actual behavior against expected behavior and generating alerts when deviations are detected.
Business value.
By narrowing any increase in losses to a specific sector of the network, rather than the system as a whole, leak-detection teams significantly reduce search time and the cost of field surveys. Data-backed pressure management by sector allows each zone to be operated at its optimal point, reducing both pressure-related leaks and pumping energy consumption. Comparing indicators across sectors also helps prioritize pipe rehabilitation investment where the return is clearest.
Operational benefits.
Online district metering reduces leak detection and localization times from weeks to days or hours, decreases non-revenue water, and enables predictive maintenance by identifying sectors with recurring abnormal behavior before they become major failures. The availability of sector-level indicators also simplifies operational and regulatory reporting to authorities and boards.
Technology overview and integration.
The district-metering digital platform integrates natively with the existing SCADA system and data historians, and through APIs can feed geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize each sector's performance on the network map, asset management systems (CMMS) to prioritize maintenance and investment, and Business Intelligence platforms for executive reporting. Communication between the field and the platform is secured under industrial cybersecurity schemes that protect the integrity of operational data.
Typical applications.
Delimiting and monitoring District Metered Areas (DMAs) in drinking water distribution networks, continuously calculating water balance and non-revenue water by sector, pressure management for leak reduction, prioritizing active leak-detection campaigns, and comparing operational performance across areas of the city.
Future scalability.
Once online district metering is consolidated across the network, the digital platform can evolve toward predictive models that anticipate leaks before they show up in minimum night flow, and integrate with digital twin architectures that simulate the network's hydraulic behavior under different demand and operating scenarios.
If your organization is evaluating implementing or expanding district metering across its distribution network, Marfel's team can help define the technical scope of the platform and its integration with SCADA.