UK water companies are investing in new technologies to help fight the drought expected to affect large parts of the country this summer.

With predictions of the worst drought since the 1930s, the water industry has been examining innovative uses of IT to help limit water waste.

One of the main ways that utilities are looking to help conserve supplies is through improved leak-detection systems, which many of the water companies are examining.

Yorkshire Water, which had to deal with a severe drought in 1995, is looking at innovative sensor technology to detect leaks before too much water is lost.

Steve Giles, a middleware architect with the company, says Yorkshire Water’s biggest challenge is to manage the state of its underground network of water pipes and sewer outlets.

‘The big difference over the next few years will be the amount of remote monitoring we carry out on our network of information coming into the control centre,’ he said.

Using a combination of sensors and listening devices that monitor pipes for the sound of water leakage, the exact location of the leak can be pinpointed.

The cost of the sensors is low enough to allow lots of them to be put into the system, says Giles.

‘We are piloting technology that would communicate via mobile phone technology, so we could drop sensors into the ground, under a manhole cover, and they will upload information about pressure in the network,’ said Giles.

‘If we could see that a problem was developing, we would be able to fix it before it appears on the surface or the customer notices an effect on their supply.’

Another area the industry is interested in is smart metering, which will allow water usage to be more accurately measured.

Paul Mullord, the UK director of the water industry association British Water, says that smart metering systems could feed water consumption information from individual houses and businesses back to water companies on an ongoing basis.

At the moment, meters are read manually about every six months, but smart meters would give water companies a continuous flow of data to provide much more detail and analysis.

‘The industry is looking at ways of inducing people to saving water, and current methods don’t really work,’ said Mullord.

‘Smart metering would allow water companies to access information on how much water each house is using over time.’

A customer might get an email every week, for example, to inform them of how much water they have consumed and encourage them not to use as much, he says.

‘You could even have automated telephone calls set up so that all customers get a telephone message from Thames Water, for example, to tell them how much water they used.’

Such a system would encourage people to be for more aware of how much water they use.

‘It would be very “in your face” and a good tool for focusing minds,’ said Mullord.