In South African municipalities the rate of water waste due to leakage in the water pipes exceeds 30%. This is a major problem in a country suffering from very limited water supply. In order to improve calculation and reporting on its water balance thereby identifying the major source of real or apparent losses, the City of Cape Town has together with Department of Water Affairs taken the lead in addressing this problem. With the assistance of DHI they have developed a new real time web-based information system that potentially gives easy access to all relevant information for managing, operating and optimising the city's water supply resources .
The municipality of City of Cape Town will use DHI Solution Software to achieve a significant reduction of water leakage in the water pipes and save a considerable amount of water, time and money every year.
"Data integration the key issue"
As a critical aspect of ensuring adequate water supply beyond 2019 it required a Water Conservation and Water Demand Management Strategy. Although the City of Cape Town's Unaccounted-for-Water presents a better picture, varying from 19% to 25% - including for Unbilled-Authorised consumption to the informal settlements making up more than 15% of its households. "This is a pilot project for South Africa. Before this project started we already had access to a huge amount of raw data from various sources in several standalone good systems. It was unfortunately extremely time-consuming to get a consistent overview which presented major limitations to abilities to conducting effective water management within our systems", says Jaco de Bruyn, head of Water Services Development Planning in the City of Cape Town. "We needed to have the access to all available water data at our fingertips and from one central entry point - online as well as offline. We therefore choose to collaborate with DHI with the view of applying their Solution Software to achieve this objective."
The solution is based on DHI's DIMS.CORE online database technology. In this case it collects data from several systems i.e. the main water supply, the water network, the sanitation network as well as wastewater treatment. The interactive dashboards with photos, maps and graphs make it easy to monitor the City's water supply system as a whole - in real-time. "The system provides easy access to information and promises to help our staff get a better overview and to focus their efforts. In other words, we now have a valuable tool for operating as well as managing our water quality and supply as well as sewage collection, treatment and disposal in the City of Cape Town - and that comprises of our entire value chain."
Identification of water and sewer system problems are also crucial
"Now that we have the core system in place, made up of management level dashboards with condensed data and operational level dashboards with detailed data, we will use a process of user and management feedback to identify future needs of the system. A comprehensive skills transfer process was included in the contract, enabling key personnel to undertake this work, supported by DHI South Africa when required.
It is also our intention to install an early warning system with more detailed measurements and monitoring, as well as a linkage to the hydraulic model of the network. This would enable us quickly identify and solve problems such as water leakages, which can save us a considerable amount of water, time and money every year."
For more information on the City of Cape Town’s Water and Sanitation Department’s business plan, see the Water Services Development Plan (WSDP) on http://www.capetown.gov.za/water or contact Jaco.debruyn@capetown.gov.za, tel. +27 21 590 1424.
For more information about DIMS.CORE and how it acts as the hub for integrating SCADA system data, offline data and models into projects which implements model based real-time control systems, please contact Andrew Pott, tel. +27 11 704 7877.
The system is based on DHI DIMS.CORE online database technology and provide dashboards on management level as well as operational level.