DMAs, vDMAs: it's all about the water balance.

Debating the semantics of what to call a water balance sector is unlikely to advance water loss reduction.

The concept of district metering is straightforward: a network sector in which inflows and outflows are monitored so that the main components of water balance – such as authorised and unauthorised consumption, and real losses – can be reliably estimated on a continuous basis, and used to prioritise interventions. That sector may coincide with a natural partition, such as an existing distribution zone, or it may be created by isolating parts of the network and installing flow meters on the remaining connections, i.e. a DMA. Ideally, the number of inlets and outlets should be kept as low as possible, since monitoring errors compound quickly. However, physically sectioning off pipes can introduce operational drawbacks; these can sometimes be mitigated by installing extra flow meters instead of closing valves, creating what some refer to as a virtual DMA (vDMA). There are also reports of hydraulic analysis being used to approximate inflows and outflows, but that would require a level of model accuracy on a continuous basis that is rarely achievable in routine distribution systems, effectively shifting from factual continuous monitoring to intermittent estimation. In all cases, the technical objective remains the same: to obtain sufficiently accurate, repeatable measurements of inflow, consumption and losses at sector level to support operational decisions. Whether this is achieved through physically isolated DMAs, vDMAs built primarily from metering and telemetry, or hybrid approaches, is ultimately a question of feasibility, cost and operational constraints in each system. What matters for water loss management is not the label used, but the robustness of the monitoring framework and the extent to which it enables timely detection of anomalies, trend analysis and prioritisation of interventions.

Get in touch to find out how Baseform can help your utility manage your DMAs, vDMAs or other sectors for next-level water loss management.