Why too much drinking water seeps away uselessly worldwide
The shortage of drinking water is often homemade. Developing countries are particularly affected, where often more than half of the drinking water is lost through leakage and theft.
The lack of drinking water is an existence-threatening problem in many regions of the world. However, the expansion of water production, which is often implemented as a first measure (for example, through dams, the construction of additional groundwater pumps, river water withdrawals or seawater desalination plants), only makes sense if the sometimes gigantic losses in the pipeline network are reduced. "In many cases, these losses are a major reason for the inadequate water supply," says Keno Strömer of the Institute for Environmental Engineering and Management (IEEM) at the University of Witten/Herdecke (UW/H).
As part of the joint research project "WaLUE" (Water Losses in Urban Environment) initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the aim of the Witten researchers was to develop solution concepts for improved water supply in Indian cities. After five years of research and implementation work, the project has now been successfully completed.
To this end, the scientists developed concepts for reducing water losses by locating and sealing leaks, as well as a sustainable business model for urban water suppliers. "The poor condition and inadequate maintenance of supply pipes leads to significant losses of not infrequently well over 50 percent on the way to the end user," explains Keno Strömer. "Deficiencies in construction quality and poor maintenance end up making the cost of water delivery more expensive. Improvements can therefore not only save valuable drinking water, but also energy, for example for water pumps, construction and personnel costs."
IEEM has now published a handbook in English, German, Hindi and Tamil on how quality improvement can be achieved with technologies and management concepts adapted to the country's conditions. It presents digitally supported technologies and concepts for water loss reduction, which were implemented for the first time in the Indian city of Tiruvannamalai as part of the research project.
German industrial partners with subsidiaries in India involved in the project were the water service provider REMONDIS Aqua, the pump manufacturer WILO SE, Dorsch Consulting and Seba KMT. The scientific partner was the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). On the Indian side, the project was accompanied scientifically by Anna University in Chennai. The project was managed by IEEM under the direction of Prof. Dr. mult. Karl-Ulrich Rudolph.
The project was made more difficult by the fact that the internationally established approach for calculating water volumes (water balance of the International Water Association IWA) could not be applied due to regional conditions. "An important success of the project was therefore to extend the water balance developed for industrialized countries and adapt it to the Indian water sector," explains Prof. Rudolph.
The measuring equipment and software for locating leaks in the sewer network also first had to be adapted to the conditions of the Indian sewer system.... "In both the technological and management areas, we were able to install and test modern, case-specific, digital system components that have to harmonize or be linked in terms of an overall system."
In many parts of India, the public water supply only works for a few hours a day. The fact that there is too little water is the downside of dynamic economic growth, which brings with it an increasing demand for water. The development is exacerbated by global climate change. The project results and their implementation were therefore very well received in India. The positive response was also evident from the large number of around 80 high-ranking participants at the final workshop, including 54 representatives of Indian municipal water utilities.
"The final workshop showed that water loss reduction is an important issue for many Indian cities and promises more sustainable success for solving India's water problems than simply focusing on increasing water production," summarizes Strömer. "It doesn't matter whether this is done comparatively cheaply, such as through groundwater wells, or through great expense, such as with seawater desalination." The WaLUE manual was also presented at the workshop. It is the main tool that will be used to disseminate the concept in science and, more importantly, in practice in more regions. For this reason, the entire procedure, the design of the technical components as well as their adaptations, the software used and the operating, organizational and financial model were precisely documented. The manual will be gladly provided as a soft copy upon request and can be downloaded from the WaLUE homepage.
But for many industrialized countries, too, there is still a lot to do on the subject of water loss reduction. This is why the EU Parliament has decided that EU member states should set national targets for reducing water leakage by December 31, 2022, which should then be achieved by December 31, 2030. ISO 24528 'Water Loss' is currently being worked on at the International Standards Organization (ISO) because, not least in the southern countries where drinking water is scarce, far higher water losses are recorded than, for example, in German pipeline networks (where on average only around 7 percent is lost in Germany and in some cases less than 3 percent is lost in particularly good water networks such as those operated by REMONDIS Aqua or Gelsenwasser).
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Since its founding in 1982, Witten/Herdecke University (UW/H) has played a pioneering role in the German educational landscape: As a model university with around 2,600 students in the fields of health, business and culture, the UW/H stands for a reform of the classic alma mater. At UW/H, imparting knowledge always goes hand in hand with value orientation and personal development. Witten makes an impact. In research, teaching and society.
