Solution Overview
China's urban water network is more than 1 million kilometers, gas more than 500,000 kilometers, and heating more than 400,000 kilometers. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development's Guidelines for the Construction of Urban Underground Utility Tunnels push tunnels and networks toward digital operation. The Regulations on the Administration of Urban Gas, among others, require safety monitoring. Underground pipes carry water supply, drainage, heat, gas, power, and communications. They are the city's lifeline. Assets are unclear, operating state is hard to see, a leak is found late, repair is slow, and several departments do not share the work. Built on IoT, big data, and GIS, this solution covers water supply, drainage, heat, gas, and utility tunnels. It watches pressure, flow, leaks, and corrosion, puts the network on one GIS map, and dispatches emergency repair.
Several networks can be watched together. Pressure, flow, temperature, and water quality sit on key nodes and upload as they change. GIS shows assets, operating state, and history on one map, including a burst analysis and a simulated valve closure. Acoustic, vibration, and fiber sensing locate a leak to about 10 meters, with a response under 5 minutes. A burst warning opens a work order, assigns a crew, and pushes the area affected. Smart water, smart heating, and smart gas platforms can be connected, so the city supervises the networks and answers an emergency in one place.
How to place it, and what changes
Where the sensors go: on a water network, pressure and flow meters at DMA boundaries and key nodes. On gas, pressure and leak detection at regulator stations and critical sections. On heat, temperature and pressure at heat-exchange stations and at the end of the run. How a leak is found: noise loggers and correlators for water; laser methane detection and fiber sensing for gas; distributed fiber (DTS/DAS) on long lines. What changes: water leakage can fall from 15–25% to below 8%. A leak that took hours is found within 5 minutes. Repair response falls by more than 50%, so fewer people lose water or gas.
