Page 113 - Water Loss Control

CHAPTER 8

Data Collection, Formatting,

and Management

Julian Thornton
Reinhard Sturm
George Kunkel, P.E.

8.1 Introduction
To undertake any water system audit and properly identify where volumes of losses are
occurring and the magnitude of the loss it is necessary to collect data, which is
• Accurate
• Standardized
• Organized
• Accountable
In Appendix A, we discuss various equipment and methodologies for accurately
capturing data for flows and pressures using both portable and permanent field equip-
ment. However once we have captured the data it is important to properly organize and
store the data in a meaningful manner, so that we
can be accountable for the subsequent decisions
which will be made. Not all water systems will
When collecting and validating data for top have all of the data they need
down water balances it is common to collect large
for a full audit, however it is
volumes of data from the customer information
system. Usually, at least 14 months of data are better to make estimations and
perform an audit than not to
collected. In large water systems, this could
amount to many gigabytes of data. It is important do one at all. Lower confidence
that the operator carefully considers the environ- can be assigned to estimates
ment in which the data will be stored for analysis and higher confidence to mea-
in order not to loose data in the transfer process. sured values.
Many operators use industry standard products

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