LeakNor - Lekkasjereduksjon i Norges drikkevannsnett

Water leaks from Norwegian water supply systems are very high compared to other western countries. All the waterworks in Norway submit data on water production and distribution between households, industry, leaks, etc. The problem is that some of this data is very unreliable.

In order to calculate the weighted average leakage in Norway, we have used three different ways to exclude data that seems outside the normal range, and different proposals for the distribution between different areas of use. We conclude that the leakage is between 39% and 51% of total water production. This is far more than 7% in Denmark, 16% in England, 16% in Finland and 14% in Sweden.

The marginal costs for this leak are estimated to be approximately NOK 500 million each year.

In LeakNor, we collaborate with a number of other partners to expand and improve the municipalities' toolbox for leakage reduction. Among other things, the project will result in a decision support tool that will help small and large municipalities to more effectively and holistically reduce leakage.

NORCE's contribution to the project includes monitoring the testing using water pressure changes, DAS data collection and analysis to find leaks in the water pipes, and developing fiber optic technology for water leak 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 .