The Challenge
A municipal water authority in Italy was losing an estimated 35% of treated water to leaks and pipe bursts across its distribution network. Existing monitoring methods relied on manual pressure readings and customer reports, meaning leaks often went undetected for days or weeks. The utility needed a real-time monitoring system that could detect pressure anomalies and leaks within minutes, not days, and provide operators with actionable alerts.
The Solution
Altirratech EU designed and deployed an IoT-based remote monitoring system across a pilot section of the municipal network. The system architecture:
- Sensors: Battery-powered pressure transducers installed at key nodes (pump stations, zone boundaries, dead ends) transmitting at 15-minute intervals
- Edge gateway: LoRaWAN gateway collecting sensor data and running local anomaly detection (sudden pressure drops trigger immediate alerts)
- Cloud dashboard: Web-based operator interface with real-time pressure maps, trend visualisation, and automated alert dispatch via email and SMS
- Predictive model: ML-based baseline profiling that learns normal pressure patterns per zone and flags deviations before they become failures
Results
- Leak detection time reduced from days to under 30 minutes
- 35% reduction in water loss in the pilot zone within 6 months
- 3 pipe bursts prevented through early pressure anomaly detection
- Operator workload reduced by 80% through automated alerting
The pilot is now being expanded to cover the full municipal network. The solution is designed to scale to multiple municipalities across the region.