Leakage is a global crisis but the UK can be world leader

With three billion litres of water being lost to leakage every day, there is an urgent need to ramp up progress on findings and fixing bursts. But are innovative solutions being given the support they need to scale up into business as usual? Ruth Williams asked the chief executive of Fido, Victoria Edwards.

“If I see another person walking down the street with a bloody listening stick, next firework night it’s not going to be a Guy Fawkes, I’m going to build a bonfire for listening sticks,” says the woman on a mission to rid the world of leaky pipes.

Victoria Edwards, the chief executive of Fido, a company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint the size and location of leaks, is no doubt about the scale of the challenge facing the sector.

Up to 95% of leaks are underground, but they’re no secret. Regulators, politicians and customers alike bash the sector for leakage. The three billion litres of water being lost each day could go a long way to meeting the looming deficits in England and Wales.

So isn’t it time to change the narrative from looking inward, to outward?

Edwards passionately believes it is.

“We live in a world where we will run out of water,” she says starkly. “No other industry wastes so much of what it produces. In a world where up to 40% of potable water is lost to leakage, we should all get the sack.”

In England and Wales we know demand will outstrip supply by the 2040s.

“The answer to shortages isn’t to abstract more water,” Edwards argues, “Fix your leakage.”

This is Fido’s and Edwards’ own mission, to rid the world of leaks. “We’re going to be disruptive to end water scarcity and we’re going to keep bashing heads to get there.”

She says Fido sought to deliberately change the nature of the industry through its data-as-a-service model. “We will only solve leakage as global problem with open data and being non-proprietary technology.”

The Fido artificial intelligence system can use any audio file to tell if there is a leak in the pipe and what size it is. This approach, Edwards says, can raise any utility company in the world up to the standards of the best by sharing the learnings from one of the most sophisticated networks in the world.

Fido’s leg up came via the United Utilities Innovation Lab and Edwards acknowledges the technology would not be here without this opportunity. “We managed to build an AI model based on some of the most complex networks in the world. As long as there’s water in a pipe we can tell you if there’s a leak, the size of it, and using our bugs, we can tell the exact location of the leak.”

For utilities that do not have sensors, Fido will give them away. It developed listening bugs that feedback to the AI and can work in any water pipe.

Part of the solution

In the UK leakage rates fell post-privatisation but then plateaued, the former chief executive of Ofwat, Rachel Fletcher, told a parliamentary inquiry that “everyone took their eye off the ball”. It was a key focus of the 2019 price review and each company was set an ambitious goal to drive down the amount of water lost by 16%. Regulatory pressure yielded innovation and advances in how the sector approached its challenge.

But in 2021-22 an average of three billion litres of water is still being lost each day to leaks in England and Wales – the equivalent to 1,212 Olympic swimming pools. By the 2050s we could be facing a daily deficit of 3.4 billion litres

The UK is not alone in the challenges it faces. In Chile, for example, 60 – 70% of drinking water is lost to leaks and of that potable water much is then consumed by lithium mining. Edwards stresses this is a global crisis but one that UK water companies could be world leaders in.

Fido works with clients around the world analysing acoustic files from a breadth of devices, feeding the AI with information of pipes and networks around the world.

“We turn each leak into a living thing, we give it an ID number and track it through its investigation and repair. This builds a global feedback loop back into the AI model about leaks and how they operate in different conditions.

“It’s a true global collaboration; every time we process data, and we track it through looking for false positives, false negatives, we’re learning more about how networks react.”

This builds a picture of how and where leaks are likely to occur, how they’ll behave.

“We constantly update the functionality based on what the industry tells us. We’re not arrogant enough to say we know what you should be doing. We’re listening to what people want.”

This feedback has led to the creation of a device that allows workers to walk down the street, detect leaks as a second point of evidence, and of an easier method of deploying listening bugs into very deep chambers.

“We’re launching a forum for how to develop the next part of the app based on the expertise of people in the field. We’re not here to replace jobs, we’re here to make sure the world doesn’t run out of water.”

With technological advances on offer, Edwards despairs of companies that are not taking advantage of data and AI.

She is aghast at a company in water-scarce California measuring leaks by digging a hole and holding a bucket in place. “This is the United States, they put a man on the moon and they’re measuring the size of a leak with a bucket?”

In contrast, the AI she explains, is all about making visible what’s invisible, and adds that finding leaks is just the start. “We’re deliverers of that truth of what is happening in the network and solving it, because we have to solve this thing.”

Scary as that may sound for a sector often under attack for losing water leaks, Edwards stresses it can own that narrative and turn it around to show the work that is being done to solve the problem.

Carrot or stick

The emphasis at PR19 no doubt got leakage back on the top of priority lists, but Edwards fears the regulator’s approach is not the right one.

“Ofwat should be encouraging water companies to adopt and trial things out on a bigger scale. Not innovation, there’s enough innovation to solve all the problems in the world!” Edwards says. “I believe it’s about adoption.”

She believes the reduction goal for PR19 and the longer-term ambition to halve leakage rates is achievable, though not easy.

“It’s good to have these targets but it’s too much stick and not enough carrot. The targets are so stringent, who in a water company would adopt a solution at scale if they risk being penalised so much. It’s fine having innovation that’s all in a little box but that doesn’t help a utility implement the operational change necessary.”

She believes Ofwat has a role to play by doing away with short-termism of five-year cycles and by establishing a framework that encourages operational change to be adopted.

“There needs to be guidelines for change that won’t penalise companies trying to make a transformational change,” the zealous chief executive says. “Otherwise we’ll keep having people walking up and down streets with listening sticks.”