Digital solution to save water: on September 1, 2023, the new project "iOLE - intelligent Online LEakage detection" started under the leadership of ECDF Professor Andrea Cominola and ECDF Research Assistant Ivo Daniel. The main goal: to minimize water losses in water distribution networks in Germany and worldwide through fast and automatic detection and localization of leakages. The project is funded with 880,000 € by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Water losses are one of the main challenges in urban water infrastructure managment, as well as a matter of concern for business and society. "Prompt detection of leaks has an enormous potential to reduce water losses. To detect them more quickly, we are combining two award-winning algorithms developed by the project consortium in earlier research efforts. These algorithms have different characteristics and we want to combine them to retain the best of these two worlds and create a usable dashboard for water utilities. In this way, they will hopefully find widespread use and application in the German and global water industry in the future," says Andrea Cominola.

The project is funded from September 2023 to August 2025 as part of the "Digital GreenTech - Environmental Technology Meets Digitalization" funding measure, which promotes the development of technologies that foster conservation of natural resources and reduce environmental pollution. The project consortium and associate partners includes the Smart Water Networks group at ECDF and TU Berlin (project coordinator), the Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin (KWB), the Urban Impact Berlin GmbH, and Gelsenwasser AG.