SatSense is pleased to announce the contract award for the DRIPIN Demonstration Project (Determining Risk of Pipe Failure using InSAR) by the European Space Agency, after having completed the corresponding feasibility study. The DRIPIN project will help UK water utility companies assess the risk of pipeline failure caused by ground movement. During the project, SatSense and partner, Arcadis, will work with three water utilities; Severn Trent Water, Northumbrian Water and Yorkshire Water to produce a market-ready service for the evaluation of ground movement risks to water pipes.
About DRIPIN Project:
The DRIPIN project will enable water utility companies to integrate network-wide ground movement information into their strategic and operational decision-making. SatSense will use its continually updated, countrywide InSAR database to identify the characteristics of movements which are likely to cause pipeline damage. The identification of such movements will be done based on a correlation analysis of historic failure and movement data.
Challenges for the Water Utility Sector:
The water utility sector is closely monitored and regulated by the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat). Ofwat categorises companies' performance as leading, average, or lagging against set metrics such as leakage, pollution control and interruption to supply. For the assessment year 2022-23, no company has been ranked in the leading category. As a result, Ofwat has asked water companies to return £114m to customers for underperformance. The recent penalty announcements will push the water sector to explore new innovative technologies to meet its 16% leakage reduction goal by 2025.
Using InSAR for Pipe Burst Risk Mapping:
SatSense’s advanced algorithms use cutting-edge techniques to process InSAR data, which can identify millimetre/year rates of ground movement over the entire pipeline network. Using machine learning to correlate historic failure data with historic ground movement data, SatSense and Arcadis will produce maps illustrating high-risk areas for the entire network. SatSense will also produce a short-term dynamic risk score, which considers how risk is evolving over time due to factors such as weather and ground conditions. The DRIPIN risk scores will enable water utility companies to assess short- and medium-term risks over their network and identify potential hotspots for future pipe failure.
The generated datasets will be fed into a data visualisation service for operational and strategic decision-making. The service will be delivered through an interactive visualisation platform, built by Arcadis, which will allow rapid inspection of ground movement data and derived short- and medium-term risk scores anywhere on the network. Arcadis will use ground movement risk to augment its industry leading Enterprise Decision Analytics (EDA) asset investment planning models, enabling increased data-driven decisions in the management of assets. The constantly evolving dynamic risk models will help water companies to make short and medium-term decisions on network inspection, maintenance, and replacement.
SatSense’s CEO Dr. Matthew Bray said ‘’We were able to get the contract for DRIPIN demonstrator project on the back of excellent work that our team delivered during the DRIPIN feasibility study, that we completed along with Severn Trent and Northumbrian Water last year. The European Space Agency’s choice to trust us for the demonstrator project stands as a testament to SatSense’s high-quality InSAR data processing and analysis capabilities. We are excited to have the support of our existing partners along with our new partners; Yorkshire water and Arcadis on this project and look forward to developing a product which can cater to the whole water utility sector across the UK’’
About SatSense’s InSAR solutions:
SatSense is a leading InSAR solutions provider, based out of Leeds in the UK. SatSense's proprietary InSAR algorithms are developed after decades of R&D work by world leading InSAR scientists Professors Andy Hooper and Tim Wright who co-founded the company in 2018. Since its inception, SatSense has worked with numerous sectors such as railways, highways, engineering consulting, water utility and even local councils to help them assess and monitor structural and ground movement over their assets and entire networks remotely. SatSense maintains a continually updated InSAR dataset for the entire UK and New Zealand in partnership with GNS Science and can deliver structural and ground movement solutions remotely across the world with its advanced data visualisation portal; SatShop.
If you would like to know more about SatSense’s InSAR dataset, please email us at contact@satsense.com or contact us here.