Baseform incorporates soil-moisture satellite data for leak detection from Asterra and others.

The software generates pipe deterioration predictions that leverage these data to prioritize operational and planning decisions.

A growing number of water utilities are testing the application of satellite technology to their operations. Based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) frequencies, companies such as Asterra or SATPLAT can provide soil moisture data in permeable areas that are visible from the sky. By monitoring changes, they can infer potential leaks in the form of a number of ‘points of interest’ (POI) that the utility can use to focus their standard leak detection methods. Baseform’s software aggregates and makes sense of key data related to water loss, including geodata, work order/pipe-break history, network flows and hydraulics. The software generates pipe deterioration predictions that leverage these data to prioritize operational and planning decisions, from leakage detection to long term renewal prioritization. Satellite-identified POIs are a natural fit as an additional analysis layer to inform the predictions. Utilities often ask Baseform to enhance and complement satellite inferred POIs with Baseform’s predicted failure rates and risk measures — the utility whose data is shown in the figure received POIs amounting to about 30% of the entire network: it then added Baseform’s risk predictions to focus on the actual assets, in a more manageable portion of their network, which it then ran traditional leak detection on. We welcome this technology and we'll be leveraging it for utilities in the best possible way.

Get in touch for more information, and to find out how your utility can benefit from Baseform.