The challenge

United Utilities had 67,000 devices generating 600 new leak alarms every day. With no way of identifying false positives, each alert had to be analysed manually. This task alone was taking the equivalent of seven full-time analysts a day.  

Having a tough regulatory leakage target to meet, the company wanted more value from its substantial logger investment.  

This meant reducing the time from alert to follow-up and making better use of the limited skilled resource. 

The FIDO AI Solution: 

We deployed FIDO AI through API with the client’s existing logger estate portal in August 2020. 

It analysed all of United Utilities acoustic logger alarms in real-time and delivered instant leak/no leak decisions and leak size.  

FIDO also created a benchmark data set by evaluating tens of thousands of historic logger files dating back to the start of 2020. 

What we achieved: 

72% of leak alarms generated by the company’s loggers were false positives.

FIDO’s leak-sizing identified the six per cent of leaks larger than 2.5m3 per hour.

Comparison of pre-and post-FIDO performance over the 12 months to July 2021 showed that by using FIDO AI to identify and prioritise large leaks United Utilities had increased its daily leak finding rate by more than a third (+34.9%) and almost halved (-49%) its overall leak run time.

Additionally, the number of logger follow-up (LFU) visits per day rose by 19.3% and the time from alarm to completed LFU dropped by 39.4%.

12,000

Logger alarm files analysed per month

Down 49%

Overall leak run time almost halved

Up 34.9%

Rise in number of leaks found per day

 FIDO AI gives me the benefit as a leakage manager to instantly assess all the alarms on our current acoustic logger fleet. We can then plan those priority leaks ensuring that we can efficiently use our leakage technicians to locate leaks on our network, whilst removing a large number of abortive visits.

Paul Parr, Leakage Technical Manager