Permanent Monitoring Turns Snapshots Into A Movie

Fifteen years ago, the water industry was deeply beholden to mechanical meter reading. But as Barry Hales, President of Matchpoint Inc., points out in this Water Talk interview, the evolution of electrical systems has created a new wave of data for utilities to become far better informed about their infrastructure and assets.

“You used to see a lot of brass and a lot of metal and a lot of rubber and whatever else,” explained Hales from the Las Vegas show floor of the AWWA’s Annual Convention and Exhibition (ACE). “Now it is all monitors and it is all software and it is all data and it is all intelligence.”

And that transition has revolutionized the monitoring available to utilities in managing their infrastructure assets. The traditional leak detection survey would provide a snapshot of pipeline performance issues and risks but there was no guarantee that a leak might occur an hour, a day or a month after the survey took place. But the permanent monitoring options of today provide a motion picture of ongoing issues to be watched and evaluated frequently.

To learn more about the system monitoring options of today, listen here: