DMA management needs DMA software.

Running a DMA system without a dedicated software that can actually extract value from the data will render ineffective the monitoring and network investment made.

The day when a set of network sectors is finally hydraulically isolated, fitted with flowmeters and connected to SCADA or other data acquisition is a massive milestone. Who knows, even throw in individually metered large consumers, that is if AMI is not already in place. All this entails considerable perspiration, from securing the funding to procuring the technologies and the suppliers, and finally dragging through construction and implementation – partitioning a network is always an uphill battle. But the hard work is rewarded: finally able to register incoming and outgoing flows, perform component analysis on a continuous basis, and enable a data-driven NRW control strategy.

Or is it? Unfortunately, many network monitoring projects stop here, one step short of actually delivering the end result that matters. For effective demand prediction and event management, which is a key enabler of reliable component analysis, the standard supervisory software that comes with these installations falls short - not designed to offer flexibility in formulating sectors with their inputs and outputs, not to mention unable to integrate billing or AMI; and with simplistic alarms that cannot offer the reliability and depth that state-of-the-art event management affords in quantifying real losses and enabling bottom-up water balance. In other words, running a DMA system without a dedicated software that can actually extract value from the data will render ineffective the monitoring and network investment made. Yes, it is possible to follow a small set of DMAs with a spreadsheet, but it will require constant human attention — inevitably it will easily fall behind, and it defeats the purpose.

When you need to continuously survey dozens of sectors and meters, and reliably accrue water balance data for prioritizing your O&M resources and control losses, such factors become crucial. In NRW management, getting the numbers right saves time, money and water. Can you afford to trust your numbers to second-best?

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