Orientador: Marina Sangoi de Olliveira Ilha / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T14:03:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pereira_LeonelGomes_M.pdf: 7027612 bytes, checksum: 4fd22a33aac88678d2f5bbf42921c334 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Estima-se que atualmente no Brasil cerca de 8 a 23% do volume de água potável produzido seja perdido em função da submedição causada principalmente pelo superdimensionamento dos medidores, ou por algum fator externo ao mesmo. Em sistemas de abastecimento indireto, é comum a ocorrência de baixas vazões, devido ao tipo de componente de controle empregado, ou seja, válvulas de bóia convencionais. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de caso desenvolvido com o objetivo de determinar o volume não contabilizado (perdas) por submedição, identificar suas causas e obter, assim, subsídios necessários à proposição de medidas que conduzam à otimização da medição de água. Contempla duas etapas: uma investigação em campo e uma investigação laboratorial. A coleta de dados em campo foi efetuada através da instalação de medidores volumétricos em série com os medidores das edificações selecionadas e aferição dos medidores em faixas de vazão determinadas. A investigação laboratorial foi efetuada para a verificação do comportamento de torneiras de bóia convencional e de alta vazão frente a uma mesma situação de abastecimento, avaliando-se a ocorrência da submedição. O estudo permitiu verificar o volume de água não contabilizado pelo hidrômetro, o conhecimento do comportamento das vazões no setor abordado, a determinação do indicador de consumo, a avaliação dos medidores instalados quanto à precisão da medição, a identificação das perdas nos hidrômetros por submedição, além da verificação do comportamento das torneiras de bóia / Abstract: Water consumption under measurement can represents about 8 to 23% of the produced water in Brazil. It can be caused by oversized meters or others external cause. Low flows are common in cold water systems with a reservoir controlled by conventional ball cock faucets. This work presents a study case developed in 22 low-income houses located in Campinas, Sao Paulo that aims to determine the water consumption under measured, to identify its causes and to formulate actions to reduce this problem. Its also contemplates a laboratory investigation to analyze the performance of conventional and ultra high flow ball cock faucets in the same situation of supplying. The results of the study can indicate some methods reduce the under measurement of water like the use of water meters with different range of accuracy combined with two types of ball cock faucets. Besides that, it could be checked the water volume lost by the actual model used, flow behavior of the population studied, a consumption index , the evaluation of the water meters installed in that region considering the measurement accuracy / Mestrado / Edificações / Mestre em Engenharia Civil

In the first part of this thesis the basic information about the losses of water and their reporting are described. There are presented the means and methods of reducing water losses and their suitability for use. Finally, general information about water meters are presented and the UFR device is briefly described. The second part of the thesis is devoted to testing water meter and UFR device on specific water connection in a family house. The thesis resulted in the author's general recommendations for owners and operators of water supply networks.

Managing water in urban areas is an ever increasingly complex challenge. Technology enables sustainable urban water management and with integrated smart metering solutions, massive amounts of water consumption data from the end users can be collected. However, the possibility of generating data from the end user holds no value in itself. It is with the use of data analysis the vast amount of the collected data can provide more insightful information creating potential benefits. It is recognized that a deeper understanding of the end user could potentially provide benefits for operational managers as well as for the end users. A single case study of a data set containing high frequency end user water consumption data from rental apartments has been conducted, where the data set was analyzed in order to see what possible information that could be extracted and interpreted based on an exploratory data analysis (EDA). Furthermore, an interview with the operational manager of the buildings under study as well as a literature review have been carried out in order to understand how the gathered data is used today and to which contexts it could be extrapolated to provide potential benefits at a building level. The results suggests that the EDA is a powerful method approach when starting out without strong preconception of the data under study and have successfully revealed patterns and a fundamental understanding of the data and its structure. Through analysis, variations over time, water consumption patterns and excessive water users have been identified as well as a leak identification process. Even more challenging than to make meaning of the data is to trigger actions, decisions and measures based on the data analysis. The unveiled information could be applied for an improved operational building management, to empower the customers, for business and campaign opportunities as well as for an integrated decision support system. To summarize, it is concluded that the usage of smart water metering data holds an untapped opportunity to save water, energy as well as money. In the drive towards a more sustainable and smarter city, smart water meter data from end users have the potential to enable smarter building management as well as smarter water services.

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the International Water Association (IWA) have designated the volume of water not registered by water meters as a form of "apparent loss" in a distribution system. The term apparent is given because this volume is not technically a water loss, as is the case of wasted water from real leaks in the distribution system. Large volumes of apparent losses hurt the revenue of utilities that rely on water metering to bill their customers. This is critical to utilities given that billed consumption is often the main source of income to provide adequate service. This form of apparent losses is a challenge to water management, particularly, in the case of significant drought because of the uncertainty about the real volume of water consumed. Although the impact of apparent losses from a single residential service connection is not as significant compared to an industrial meter with low accuracy, the cumulative effect of apparent losses across residential users can be very significant. Until the early 2000's water utilities in the U.S. relied on mechanical water meters to measure residential water use. Since then, electronic meters with higher accuracy at low flow rates have been developed. Data collection from meters has also evolved as well, from the manual reading by an operator, to drive-by systems and most recently to remote readings using a network of transmitters/receivers (i.e., advanced metering infrastructure or AMI). An expectation of this dissertation is that it will help water utilities to have a better idea of the volume of apparent losses due to metering inaccuracy (i.e., registration error) and provide insights into the effects of installing AMI systems to residential metered water (MW). To achieve this goal, two main objectives are fulfilled 1) to expand on the knowledge of registration error (RE) in mechanical nutating-disc (ND) meters used to monitor residential consumption, and 2) to evaluate the impact of metering infrastructure upgrades on the volume of metered water (MW) from residential service connections. This dissertation follows the manuscript format with three journal articles constituting the main chapters after a general introduction characterizing the issues in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is an experimental study that evaluates the influence of service time (ST) and volumetric throughput (TP) on the accuracy of ND meters within the recommended flow rates set by the U.S. water industry for meters with an internal diameter of ⅝-in. (15-mm). Over 300 meters removed from service were tested for accuracy. Key findings of this study are 1) ND meters that have been in service over 25 years have a greater likelihood of poor accuracy at the minimum recommended flow rate (Q^min) of 0.25 gallons per minute (gpm) (57 liters per hour (L/h)) and 0.5 gpm (114 L/h) independent of TP, and 2) comparison with data from accelerated laboratory testing showed that simulated use may not necessarily reflect the actual performance of ND meters in service, particularly, at 0.25 and 0.5 gpm. Chapter 3 is an experimental study that investigates REs of ND meters below the minimum recommended flow rate (Q^min = 0.25 gpm), particularly, at ½, ¼ and ⅛ of Q^min. Over 100 meters removed from service were tested in this study. Key findings of this study are 1) confirmed how performance decreases with reducing flow rate below Q^min, 2) of the variables considered, TP was found to be a better indicator of RE at Q_(1/8)^min up to an approximate meter reading of 0.66 MG (2.5 ML) compared to ST for 10 ≤ ST ≤ 24 years, with minimal influence at Q_(1/4)^min and none at Q_(1/2)^min, and 3) a strong linear relationship was found between RE at Q_(1/2)^min and RE at Q^min independent of TP or ST. Chapter 4 is a study that evaluates the extent to which the implementation of a new AMI system combined with a system-wide installation of new ND meters impacted the volume of MW from residential service connections of a 22,000-person municipality in southwest Virginia. Time-series analysis techniques were employed to evaluate changes in the trend of bimonthly MW and median daily MW over a six-year period. Key findings of this study are 1) the AMI system improved the accountability of MW for the utility, 2) despite an ongoing downward annual trend in MW, average bimonthly MW mildly increased after the AMI system was fully operational, and 3) annual MW increased by 2.2% in the 12-month period immediately following the metering infrastructure upgrade. / Doctor of Philosophy / An expectation of this dissertation is that it will help water utilities to have a better idea of the volume of water not being measured by residential water meters in their system (i.e., registration error) and provide insights into the effects of replacing water meters and installing automatic data collections systems (i.e., metering infrastructure upgrades) to improve accounting of water and revenue. To achieve these goals three studies were conducted. In the first two studies, over 400 nutating-disc (ND) water meters, a type of mechanical meter used to measure water, were removed from service and tested to evaluate the percent of water not measured at different ranges of flow (volume per time), and to determine if metering errors changed depending on the service time (ST) of the meter or total volume of water that had gone through (TP) it while in service. The third study consisted in the review of water consumption data from a municipality in southwest Virginia that underwent a metering infrastructure upgrade consisting of replacing all their water meters and installing an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system (i.e., automatic meter reading). Key findings discussed in this dissertation are 1) confirmed how performance of ND meters decreases with reducing flow rate below 0.25 gallons per minute (gpm). This is the minimum flow rate (Q^min) recommended by the U.S. water industry for accuracy testing of mechanical meters. 2) ND meters that have been in service over 25 years have a greater likelihood of poor accuracy at Q^min and 0.5 gpm independent of TP. 3) The relative influence of TP and ST on accuracy varied with the test flow rate. 4) Comparison with data from accelerated laboratory testing showed that simulated use may not necessarily reflect the actual performance of ND meters in service, particularly, at 0.25 and 0.5 gpm. 5) The AMI system improved the accountability of water for the utility. 6) Despite an ongoing downward annual trend in metered water (MW), average bimonthly MW mildly increased after the AMI system was fully operational. And 7) annual MW increased by 2.2% in the 12-month period immediately following the metering infrastructure upgrade.

The diploma thesis describes the actual situation of smart water metering, an overview of water meters suitable for remote data reading and individual components for application of remote data transmission including transmission itself. The thesis also contains the characteristics of available wireless data communication technologies and detailed solutions according to two companies specializing in remote transmission of water meter data. Subsequently, the pilot projects of large water company are presented, including practical findings. The practical part deals with the implementation of smart water metering in three specific municipalities, including a description of the area of interest, water supply system specification and possible limitations, the recommended technology, the requirements for putting in into operation and the pricing of technology and services according to two specialized companies. Finally, the possibilities of other using of smart water meter technology are discussed.

Sustainable management of finite resources is vital for ensuring livable conditions for both current and future generations. Measuring the total water consumption of residential households at high temporal resolutions and automatically disaggregating the sole signal into classified end usages (e.g. shower, sink) allows for identification of behavioural patterns that could be improved to minimise wasteful water consumption. Such disaggregation is not trivial, as water consuming patterns vary greatly depending on consumer behaviour, and further since at any given time, an unknown amount of fixtures may be used simultaneously. In this work, we approach the disaggregation problem by evaluating the performance of a set of recurrent and convolutional neural network structures provided approximately one year of high resolution water consumption data from a single apartment in Sweden. Unlike previous approaches to the problem, we let the models process the full, uninterrupted flow traces (as opposed to extracted segments of water consuming activity) in order to allow for temporal dependencies within and between water consuming activities to be learned. Out of four networks applied to the task, we find that a deeper temporal convolutional network structure yields the best overall results on the test data, with prediction accuracy of 85% and F1-score above 0.8 averaged over all end-use categories - a performance exceeding that of commercial analysis tools, and comparable to components of current state-of-the-art approaches. However, significant decreases in performance are observed for all of the networks, particularly for toilet and washing machine activity, when evaluating the models on unseen and augmented data from the apartment, indicating the results can not be fully generalised for usage in other households. / Hållbar användning av ändliga resurser är avgörande för att försäkra god livskvalitet för både nutida och framtida generationer. I Sverige är vatten för många en självklarhet, vilket öppnar upp för slösaktigt användande. En metod för att utbilda användare och identifiera icke hållbara beteenden är att kvantifiera vattenförbrukningen i hushåll baserat på syfte (t.ex. tvätta händerna, diska) eller källa (t.ex. dusch, handfat) av slutanvändningen. För att göra en sådan sammanställning mäts den totala åtkomsten av vatten i hög upplösning från hushåll, och signalen delas sedan upp i respektive kategori av slutanvändning. En sådan disaggregering är inte trivial, och försvåras av skillnader i beteendemönster hos användare samt faktumet att vi inte vid någon tidpunkt vet hur många vattenarmaturer som används samtidigt. I syftet att förbättra nuvarande tekniker för disaggregeringsproblemet implementerar och utvärderar vi alternativa lösningar baserade på rekurrenta och konvolutionerande neurala nätverk, på flödesdata insamlad med hög upplösning från en lägenhet i Sverige under en period av cirka ett år. Till skillnad från tidigare förhållningssätt till problemet låter vi våra modeller bearbeta den fullständiga, oavbrutna, flödesdatan (i motsats till extraherade segment av vattenförbrukande aktiviteter) för att möjliggöra lärandet av tidsmässiga beroenden inom och mellan vattenförbrukande aktiviteter. Utav fyra testade nätverk finner vi att ett djupt konvolutionerande nätverk ger den bästa klassificeringen överlag, givet testdata, med genomsnittlig igenkänningsnogrannhet på 85%. Signifikant försämrade resultat observerades för samtliga modeller i kategorierna toalett och tvättmaskin när nätverken testades på augmenterad data från hushållet, vilket indikerar att resultaten inte kan generaliseras för användning i andra lägenheter.

The government has indicated that innovation fosters economic growth and is essential to maintaining a competitive position in international markets. Patents are the preferred mechanism by which the Australian Government and other governments encourage their nationals to protect their innovations. The question of the entitlement was raised in several cases in the Federal Court of Australia where there has been a failure to name all of the inventors on a patent grant (non-joinder) or where persons were mis-named as inventors, who were not and consequently have no interest in a grant (rnis-joinder). In both cases, parties who were not themselves daiming an entitlement to the invention, brought objections based on a number of grounds, including entitlement. The results have been the revocation of the patent in the case on the non-joinder of an inventor and in the case of mis-joinder, the preliminary view of a judge of the Federal Court has been, that the patent would be invalid through lack of entitlement. The result is that competitors are permitted to 'exploit' the invention, as the subject matter is not protected by a patent. The implications are far reaching, For example, where a research team in collaboration with another develops an invention but omits the inventive contribution of even one member of one team or includes a person who has not made an inventive contribution in the patent grant, the patent will be invalid. In these circumstances, the author considers that the result produces a disincentive to innovate. Consideration of this area in other jurisdictions reveals that the U.S. and the U.K. have recognised this as an unsatisfactory state of affairs. As a result, Congress in the U.S. made provision in their Patent Code in the early 1950's, that in the case of error or mistake giving rise to a non-joinder or mis-joinder of inventors, the patent would not be invalid but could be rectified by the Director of Patents and Trade Marks (the 'Director'). In the U.K., the Comptroller has powers to deal with a wide variety of cases involving entitlement to ownership of a patent. The situations include but are not limited to cases where some but not all of the persons entitled to the grant have been granted the patent, i.e. non-joinder, or where a person entitled to be granted a patent, has been granted a patent together with a person who is not entitled, i.e. mis-joinder. The thesis will focus on the non-joinder and mis-joinder of inventors, but the U.K. provision addresses a wider field of parties entitled, whether entitled as inventors or on some other basis. In addition, the U.K. and Germany have made provision restricting the persons who are able to challenge a patent on entitlement grounds. This is restricted to those persons having an interest in the patent, rather than open to any person, as is the case in Australia. The Australian decisions have been determined on historic cases dating back to the 17th century. It is timely to consider amendments which will overcome revocation of patents under Australian law, for what is essentially a matter between the persons interested. These amendments will accordingly encourage innovation, particularly in an environment where intellectual property has taken on greater importance and where the identification of the inventor has become more complex as collaborations in research become more common.