The Met Office has launched a suite of water supply models, to assist water companies in managing water resource strategies and operations more proactively and efficiently. The models provide detailed weather dependent leakage, demand, burst and turbidity data.

Water demand, leakage, burst, seasonal night usage and turbidity have historically been difficult to quantify or forecast accurately across water company networks and resource zones, with a large weather dependency in all elements. Understanding this weather dependency enables accurate modelling and reporting of these components.

The launch follows a successful collaboration with Thames Water to make the suite of models available across the whole water industry. The models, which have been developed to include the Met Office’s world leading weather data, can be adapted and calibrated to individual water company regions.

The Met Office’s suite of models consists of:

Burst model

Integration of the burst model into contingency planning and emergency response, allows some of the worst impacts of winter weather to be modelled and quantified with mitigation activities planned.

Leakage model

The Met Office’s leakage prediction model assists by assessing and predicting the influence of weather on winter leakage, which is known to particularly increase in periods of winter weather.

The benefits of the model include close management of weather related leakage, on a week by week basis. This allows the water company to constantly monitor and review the leakage strategy. Through understanding and modelling weather related leakage, an informed strategy to meet leakage targets can be implemented and expenditure on leakage reduction work can be set against levels of risk.

Demand model

The model allows water companies to manage service reservoir storage levels optimally, providing efficiencies in energy use and security of supply during peak periods. Maintenance activities can be scheduled with increased confidence and assessment of the business benefits of implementing demand management measures, such as temporary use bans, can be undertaken accurately.

Seasonal night usage model

The seasonal night use model allows seasonal usage increases to be separated from leakage

Leakage trends across different resource zones over the summer can be monitored with the weather signal removed and leakage planners are able to use the seasonal night use model results to target detection resources effectively during the summer.

Turbidity model

The measurement of turbidity, the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid, is a key test of water quality.

The cost incurred in bringing the untreated water up to drinking water quality can increase the cost of production by up to five times.

The turbidity model enables the relationship between heavy rainfall and turbidity to be modelled, helping manage resources and minimise the impact of high turbidity events.

Following successful pilots, the Met Office is looking for water companies to calibrate the burst, leakage, demand and season night use models to their region.

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