Plugging Leaks From Space — How Satellites Can Help Keep Water Flowing Efficiently And Safely

By Damian Lewis

The British water industry finds itself at a critical juncture, grappling with significant cost pressures, financial penalties, and escalating regulatory scrutiny. With wastewater failures already incurring over £240 million in sanctions this year and a more robust water governing body on the horizon following the overhaul of Ofwat, the pressure on water companies to enhance their operational resilience and sustainability has never been greater.

Recently, over £10 million in water company fines have been used to restore local waterways across the UK, indicating commitments to protecting the environment and the communities impacted by water pollution are clearly growing. With the new governing body intending to halve water pollution by 2030, non-compliance could lead to more substantial fines with more stringent enforcement. Compounding these challenges, scientists now warn that extreme weather such as heatwaves and floods will be the norm in this country, underscoring the urgent need for more effective water resource management.

Amid this intricate web of competing priorities and significant upheaval, satellite-enabled IoT technology could help to provide part of the solution for a smarter way forward. By enabling real-time monitoring across water firms’ vast infrastructure, this technology can help utility providers improve the efficiency of their networks.

This shift towards proactive management not only bolsters network safety and environmental protection but also equips companies to anticipate risks, build resilience, and navigate the complex array of regulatory and financial demands.

Pressures And Penalties Facing The Water Sector Are Rising

Water companies are currently facing mounting supervisory pressures and costly fines, and the establishment of one new regulatory body to oversee the entire water system is likely to bring new, challenging regulatory reforms. Alongside these pressures, increasing dry spells of weather are raising concerns. Currently, a lot of UK water infrastructure is old, with leaks, bursts, and general inefficiencies common across these networks, raising the risk of regulatory consequences, with companies being increasingly penalised for sewage and water leaks.

Because of how large water networks are, it can be challenging to find exactly where an issue arises from, making it difficult to quickly fix the problem. What’s more, due to the vast spread of pipes and tanks, issues are often only detected once large enough to cause disruption, risking greater damage to the wider network.

Water companies must move from a reactive to a more proactive and preventative approach, actively anticipating challenges rather than responding once the damage has been done. This change will help safeguard the environment from detrimental sewage leaks while helping to protect their bottom lines — a win-win.

Embracing Proactive Water Management With IoT

Real-time monitoring via IoT can help water companies proactively manage and improve their critical and often remote assets like reservoirs and pipelines, moving to a more proactive and cost-effective approach.

Using IoT technologies, companies can deploy sensors across their water network. This enables real-time data collection on essential parts of their system, from the pressure and flow rates in pipes to reservoir levels and overall water quality. Enabled by satellite connectivity, or perhaps a combination of satellite and terrestrial network capabilities, devices can stay connected, reliably, across the entire network — from city centers to the most remote locations.

Solutions, such as those provided by one of our ecosystem partners, Stevens Water, use this data to provide actionable insights into the condition and operation of equipment, which can help companies detect issues such as leaks or equipment failures and fix these early-on, preventing larger and more costly damage across the network.

IoT devices can also be used to control equipment remotely, such as pumps and valves. This ensures that if leaks are detected, or if conditions change, firms can respond rapidly and redirect resources, reducing the need for manual intervention.

Ultimately, this ‘always-on' monitoring can help to prevent sewage leaking into the environment and the loss or contamination of valuable water resources, not only improving operational efficiency and costs for water firms but also bolstering the durability of their infrastructure.

Why The Industry Should Turn To Space For Help

In order for IoT technologies to work effectively, they require constant, reliable connectivity. However, many parts of the UK’s water network are in more remote areas where cellular connectivity is unstable or non-existent.

This is where satellite connectivity comes in, providing consistent connectivity and ensuring IoT monitoring sensors can remain always on. This means companies can gather reliable and real-time data from across their network and can use these insights to bolster resilience in operations regardless of location.

With the failure of cellular networks resulting in environmental incidents in the past, satellite connectivity ensures an alternative or back-up to controlling these systems, preventing similar events occurring by guaranteeing continuous environmental monitoring, remote infrastructure control, and advanced metering.

Building A Resilient Future For Water Networks

As the cost of tackling leaks and overflows climbs higher and higher, the case for smarter, preventative monitoring has never been clearer. Modernising ageing infrastructure and detecting issues early isn’t just good practice — it’s essential for protecting both the environment and company finances.

With tougher regulation on the horizon and penalties for non-compliance already steep, the drive for resilience is becoming business-critical. Satellite-enabled IoT gives water companies the visibility to see what’s happening across their networks in real time, helping teams fix small problems before they become big ones.

By combining reliable connectivity with powerful data insights, firms can move from reactive maintenance to foresight — aiming to enhance operational efficiency ahead of disruption, reducing costs, and building more resilient, sustainable networks.

Damian Lewis is the Market Development Manager for Viasat.