Harborline Water supplies 1.4 million people across the Rotterdam region through 9,000 km of mains, some of them more than a century old. Below sea level, every lost litre matters twice.
The challenge
Finding leaks depended on night-time walks with listening sticks and on customers calling in. Small leaks could run for months. Data existed, but it lived in four systems from four vendors, and nobody could see the whole network at once.
The team also needed a way to act on what they found. A dashboard full of alerts is useless if crews can't tell which ones are real, or where exactly to dig.
“We used to learn about bursts from social media. Now we learn about them before the street is wet.”
Pieter van Dam, Head of Network, Harborline Water
How Encoder Energies made it possible
Encoder Energies connected Harborline's existing smart meters, pressure loggers and acoustic sensors through their current head-end systems, with no new hardware in the first phase. Within six weeks, the whole network was on a single live model.
Our detection models compare night flow, pressure transients and acoustic signatures zone by zone. Each alert comes with a confidence score and a likely location within a few metres, sent straight to the crew's work-order system.
Reduction in non-revenue water
Median time to detect a burst
Fewer exploratory excavations
What customers get
Households with a smart meter now receive a notification when the meter sees continuous flow for more than a few hours, usually a running toilet or a dripping outdoor tap. Most fix it the same day.
- Fewer interruptions, because bursts are found and isolated faster
- Lower bills, thanks to early warnings on leaks inside the home
- Clearer communication when work is planned in their street
For Harborline, the result is a network that loses less, costs less to run, and gives regulators the evidence they ask for.
