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Artificial Intelligence Can Prevent Enormous Amounts Of Damage And Water Loss From Building Leaks

This article is more than 4 years old.

Broken water pipes can lead to millions of dollars in damages.

manola72, Adobe Photo Stock

When it comes to building construction, all sorts of things can go wrong. The most common problem is water damage, according to insurance claim records.

“It’s the silent killer,” says Yaron Dycian, chief product and strategy officer for WINT Water Intelligence. Water is also an increasingly scarce, and valuable, resource – a reality that is not lost on many big companies who are embracing sustainable practices.

Based in Israel, WINT was created in 2012 after its founder experienced water damage in his home and became aware there were no solutions around. There are now home-based solutions, but tackling bigger buildings was a far greater challenge.

The system uses artificial intelligence to detect leaks, thereby conserving water and preventing damage in commercial and government buildings.

From taps and toilets to hidden pipes and water towers, the cost and destruction caused by leaks can add up. On average, buildings waste 25% to 30% of water consumed. Typically, for instance, a building with 100 toilet stalls will have three leaky valves at any point in time. These alone can cost $30-40,000 in water each year.

In one case, a malfunctioning cooling tower was pouring $1,000 of water down the drain every day, amounting to half a million dollars a year, according to Dycian. “And that went on for two and a half years until we came in,” he says.

“It’s that stupid little thing that nobody takes care of. There’s this massive, massive waste of water, and people are not aware of it.”

And then there’s the cost of damage. The most extreme case that Dycian recalls was a high-end block of apartments in New York, Manhattan. About a month and a half before delivery to the tenants, there was a leak on the 19th floor over the weekend.

“Water has this habit of falling down through the floors,” he says. With no-one around, it made its way right down to the ground floor, causing property damage of $30 million. On top of that, Dycian believes the builders had to pay $80 million in delayed delivery compensation.

It’s not just the construction market that is feeling the pain; water damage also affects the property market. An insurance company’s building in Israel, for instance, had a leak on the 11th floor – again on the weekend – “and the building was decimated,” Dycian says. Thousands of ruined computers and other damages amounted to around $3 million, and management had to be relocated.

WINT’s AI-based solution uses sophisticated technology to first identify normal water usage patterns through water detection devices placed throughout the building. “The moment it gets deployed,” Dycian explains, “each device starts using machine learning to understand and analyze the local flow patterns, which will differ from location to location and season to season.”

This takes about three to four weeks, and the devices communicate with a processor in the cloud. Once normal patterns are established, they can detect anomalies and provide real-time alerts to staff on their smartphones, pinpointing the exact location and nature of the leak. When the system detects serious leaks and bursts, valves can shut off the water supply. If the staff know the event is normal, they can use a remote control to override the system.

It also sends detailed monthly reports to managers so water usage can be monitored and adjusted.

Water devices use machine learning to establish normal water usage and detect anomalies.

Courtesy Yaron Dycian, WINT

Atlantis Casino Resort Spa, in Reno, Nevada, uses 6.5 million gallons of water every month. Since employing WINT late last year, the director of facilities, Perry Sanders, reported recently they had already saved $36,000 after investing an initial $48,000. He also said the system was remarkably accurate, detecting hidden leaks that the staff couldn’t find.

With any automated detection system that uses AI, there is always a challenge of optimizing detection while avoiding false alerts, Dycian explains. “And that’s what we do very well.”

They also monitor systems off-site. This was very lucky for a Fortune 200 company that had the system installed, he says. Following a change of staff in the maintenance team, everyone forgot about it. After about a year, alerts started firing off. The leaks started small, increasing to a few tens of gallons an hour, and the staff paid no attention.

WINT escalated the problem up the site’s command chain until it reached the vice president. By then, the leak had gone from 40 gallons to 25 cubic meters an hour. By the time they found the cause (a burst pipe), a thousand cubic meters of water – equivalent to nearly half an Olympic swimming pool – had leaked below the building, displacing concrete slabs. The company estimated it could have caused $6.5 million worth of damage if left unchecked.

Courtesy Yaron Dycian, WINT

The organization is currently expanding beyond Israel to the U.S., UK, Australia and Singapore, and expects demand to grow. “Most companies have a sustainability officer,” Dycian says. “And when we come in, what we show is that the amount of savings that we can provide simply by reducing water consumption is almost identical to what you pay us,” which is an ongoing service fee rather than a big upfront payment.

“WINT reduces our water consumption by 25%,” says Sanders, “helping us cut ongoing costs and minimize our environmental footprint – it’s a sustainability solution that pays for itself.

“And it prevents water leaks from turning into disasters that can cause massive damage to property and disrupt the business.”

Essentially, they get damage protection for free while conserving one of the Earth’s most precious resources.

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