Consortium Launches London Based Trial to Detect Water and Gas Leaks using Openreach’s Full Fibre Network

The technology, developed by tech company FiberSense - uses Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) – which turns spare fibre optic cables in Openreach’s network into early warning sensors that can ‘hear’ and accurately pin-point problems across surrounding gas and water networks.

Funded by the Transport for London Lane Rental Scheme, an initial six-month pilot is underway, in Hounslow, West London.

A key aim of the project is to detect problems early to allow early intervention and thereby reduce the disruption of emergency or unplanned street works, which currently cost the capital an estimated £750m every year in terms of economic and social impact.

Providing early detection allows utilities to schedule repair work outside of busy hours or at the weekend.

The DAS technology works by detecting changes in the light signal used in fibre optic cables caused by vibrations which could be a blockage or leak in surrounding networks, or simply a developer digging in the wrong place. Machine learning is used to locate the exact point of the vibration and train the system to separate background noise – such as a passing car or underground train – from specific events like a leak.

Thames Water worked with Arcadis to explore how the economics of fibre sensing could be brought in line with that needed for a scale deployment. The breakthrough came with the concept of one sensing network capable of providing real-time data for multiple utilities, allowing costs to be shared. Further savings would come from making use of the extensive fibre network already built by Openreach, rather than having to install a dedicated sensing fibre network.

If the trial is successful, the consortium will look to expand with a London-wide pilot, making London the first city in the world to have effectively an underground early warning radar system.

The extensive coverage of Openreach’s full fibre network creates the potential for the technology to be rolled out across the UK to help businesses in other sectors, including water, gas, telecoms and electricity – deal with critical challenges to their networks.

Sam Bright, Innovation Manager for Thames Water, said: Openreach were the obvious choice of telecoms partner for this project. We want to create a model that can be adopted in other UK cities, not just in London. Openreach have the national reach we wanted.

This model could be useful to all UK water companies and the same goes for the gas and telecoms providers around the country.

Trevor Linney, Director of Network Technology for Openreach, said: Openreach is constantly looking at leveraging new technology and innovation to improve the resilience and efficiency of our network, and by testing the use of fibre sensing technology in this way – we hope to prove that we can do that, for the networks of other utility providers– with the potential to offer this service across the UK.

Impact Assessment: Street works (Charges for Occupation of the Highway) (publishing.service.gov.uk)

He added that the business’ interest in fibre sensing runs deeper than simply being a fibre platform for a service to utilities; Openreach’s fibre network is already part of the critical national infrastructure of the UK – and this new technology could enable us to help protect the other networks critical to people’s lives across the country.

James Harrison, Director of North London Network, at Cadent, said: The idea of real-time information coming from our network is really attractive. In a typical year in London, we have over 2,000 events where developers start digging in the wrong place, too close to our network. Some of these result in leaks and disruptive repair works. Early detection of these events has an obvious benefit to us – and the other partners.

Mark Harrop, Senior Strategic Opportunities Director at Arcadis, said: Arcadis are proud of the work done alongside Thames Water to bring together a group of like-minded businesses to make this trial happen. TfL recognised the potential of this project to reduce emergency works related travel disruption and we’re optimistic that multiple utilities sharing one sensing network will be the economic game changer this technology needs to really take off. It’s a real example of bringing our ‘improving the quality of life’ mission statement to life.