LeakNor - Leakage reduction in the Norwegian water supply network

The water leakages from Norwegian water supply systems are very high compared to the same in other western countries. All water-works submits data for water production and the split of this between households, industry, leakages etc. A problem is that some of these data are very unreliable.

To calculate the average weighted leakage in Norway we have used three different ways of excluding data that seems to be outside the normal variation, and different suggestions for the split between different uses. We arrive at the conclusion that the leakage lies between 39 % and 51 % of the total water produced. This is far more than the 7 % found in Denmark, 16 % in England, 16 % in Finland and 14 % in Sweden.

The marginal cost of this leakage, is estimated to be approximately 500 million Norwegian kroner each year.

NORCE's contributions include overseeing the experimental campaign using water pressure changes, DAS data collection and analysis for finding leaks in real water pipelines, and developing fiber optic technology for water leakage detection.

The consortium gathers expertise from various municipalities, companies and universities. Oslo municipality owns the project and SINTEF is the project manager. Some of the key participants include Oslo Municipality, Trondheim Municipality, Bærum Municipality, Asker Municipality, Vestfold Vann, Bergen Municipality, SINTEF, Norsar, NORCE, NMBU, Norsk Vann, IDEA, Powel, PipeLife, Imisu, Leica, ASN, Equanostic and Envidan .