Smart Water Management
CONSAC · Water utility, Province of Salerno
Digital mapping and advanced diagnostics of water networks across 50+ towns in the province of Salerno. From reactive “emergency cost” to proactive “planned investment” — with georeferenced data, not guesswork.
Every litre lost is money burning.
In Campania, water-loss rates are among the highest in Italy: in some areas 60% to 70% of the water fed into the network is lost.
For a utility like CONSAC, in a territory where water must often be pumped up to hilltop villages, every leak isn’t just vanishing water: it’s electricity paid for nothing.
water lost in some areas of the network
The network becomes data.
Not a technical exercise for its own sake, but a digital check-up of the network: three phases that turn kilometres of invisible pipes into a navigable, diagnosable map.
Digitisation
KML files with the exact position of pipes, valves and nodes.
Monitoring & analysis
Flow and pressure cross-checked with correlators, geophones and aerial thermography.
Georeferenced location
Every leak “pinned” on the map: dig only where needed, no empty trenches.
Crews arrive right on target.
Over 50 towns mapped from May to December — spanning both the summer drought peak and the start of the rains, to see how the network reacts to different conditions.
Every anomaly lands on a WebGIS platform with ID, coordinates, severity and photos: a leak catalogue, intervention history and KPIs in one place.
towns mapped (Salerno province)
preliminary accuracy on leaks
emergency cost (Class 3) vs prevention
water delivered against 100% of the energy, without monitoring
Prevention costs a fraction of the emergency.
Repairing in prevention (Class 1) costs 1×. Acting in emergency (Class 3) costs up to 10× between overtime, third-party damage, water tankers and service outages.
Without monitoring you pay 100% of the energy to deliver even just 40% of the water: cutting losses immediately lowers pumping consumption.
Prevention vs emergency
Same fault, up to 10× the cost: overtime, tankers, third-party damage, service interrupted.
“Finding the leak with the thermal drone costs infinitely less than going on ignoring it on the bill.”
The method is replicable: we now propose it to water utilities and municipalities across Italy, ahead of ARERA targets and PNRR funds on leaks.