January 27, 2026

Georgia city uses new AI tech to target water line repairs

Georgia city uses new AI tech to target water line repairs

Using AI to target water line repairs 

Losing water to undetected leaks, a utilities company in Georgia used AI technology to target downtown water line repairs and address an annual revenue loss of up to $238K.  

 

The challenge: Targeting water line repairs  

A utilities company in the third-largest city in Georgia supplies its local residents and businesses with over 15bn gallons of clean water each year.  

Distributing this volume of water is no small feat—the utility company’s water supply network encompasses over 1,300 miles of pipe and over 67,000 active and inactive connections.  

Like many utilities across the US, however, this water infrastructure is aging, and the miles of pipe and thousands of connections are at risk of leaks.  

When it comes to non-revenue water—water lost to leakage after having been abstracted, treated and pumped—Georgia is one of the more progressive states in the US, having required utilities to conduct annual water loss audits since 2012. 

As a result, its city leaders knew that the network was losing water—the 2023 water loss audit indicated that its non-revenue water loss could be as high as 27%—but what they didn’t know was where the leaks were.  

 

The solution: CivilSense™ real-time leak detection  

Following a consultation with Oldcastle Infrastructure’s smart water consultants, city officials identified CivilSense™ real-time leak detection as a potential solution.  

CivilSense™ is the only AI-powered water asset management solution to combine predictive risk assessment with targeted real-time leak detection, and the utilities company opted to deploy the real-time leak detection capability on a focused, high-priority area of the network.  

They selected a 20-mile section of the water distribution network covering around 100 blocks in the heart of the city’s downtown area. The area under investigation was a business district containing critical city infrastructure, which would result in significant economic and civic disruption in the event of a major line break.  

CivilSense™ field experts deployed 202 acoustic sensors across the targeted section of the network and created a total of 650 investigation sessions. These investigation sessions gathered acoustic data that was fed into the CivilSense™ AI for analysis.  

The AI, powered by FIDO Tech, performed comparative analysis using its curated library of more than 2.3 million acoustic signatures to generate Waypoints that indicate potential leaks in the system.  

 

What is a Waypoint?  

A Waypoint is an acoustic signature that the AI has assessed to be consistent with a leak based on comparison against a comprehensive library of previously detected and validated acoustic signatures. Waypoints are validated and pinpointed using sensors and a technique called correlation, which confirms and then precisely determines the location of the leak.  

 

Field teams used the results of this analysis to redeploy sensors upstream and downstream of each of the leaks, using cloud computing to validate and pinpoint the location of each leak via a technique known as correlation. The leaks were then marked up to direct water line repairs.  

 

The outcome: water line repairs to save up to $239K 

The CivilSense™ team created 650 investigation sessions, from which the AI generated 52 Waypoints. Of these Waypoints, CivilSense™ correctly determined that 19 were previously undetected leaks in the targeted section of network and pinpointed their locations for repair.  

The leaks were discovered across a range of network infrastructure assets, including distribution mains, meter valves and vaults, curb stops and hydrants. The largest leak detected was on a main line valve, and was assessed to be losing around 10 gallons per minute.  

In total, applying AWWA nominal volumetric values, the leaks were assessed to be losing a combined volume of 93.7 gallons per minute, which equates to around 49.2M gallons of water every year.  

With local residential and commercial water rates ranging from $2.01 to $4.86 per thousand gallons, this represents a revenue loss of between $98K and $239K every year.  

By revealing this loss and enabling the Georgia utilities company to conduct water line repairs to address the leaks, CivilSense™ is helping the city address aging infrastructure issues, develop water supply resiliency, and improve its finances.  

 

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