Israeli startup spotting water leaks by satellite

Israel’s Utilis uses satellite photos to help water utilities find costly leaks in their systems and keep revenues from going down the drain.

Israeli startup company Utilis that uses existing satellite imagery to pinpoint underground leaks.

Requiring no software or hardware installation at the utility, nor any manpower on the ground, the Utilis solution uses spectral aerial imaging from satellite-mounted sensors to spot leakage in distribution pipes over thousands of square kilometers at once.

The images are processed with a patented set of algorithms that detect the unique “signature” of drinking water (as opposed to, say, rainwater or swimming-pool water). The customer gets a detailed graphic leakage report overlaid on a map with streets, pipes and information on the size of the leak.

“It’s like the difference between a doctor diagnosing a problem by symptoms and an MRI seeing where the problem actually is,” says Chief Operating Officer Elly Perets. “While other smart water technologies look for signs of water, we see the water leaking under the ground.”

Even before formally debuting at the 2015 WATEC expo in Tel Aviv in October, the Rosh Ha’ayin-based company was signing its first deals. The expo brought additional interest from utilities in North and South America, Australia and other countries.

“We were overwhelmed by the response to our technology and the feedback we got,” says Perets.

Looking for water on distant planets

The idea of using readily available satellite images to detect underground leaks originated with Lauren Guy, now 29, who used these images to look for water on other planets during his studies at Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University from 2007 to 2012.

After finishing his master’s degree, Guy became aware of the vast extent of the leakage problem and decided to put his knowledge to practical use in remote sensing. If microwave imaging could penetrate the atmosphere, he reasoned, it could also see through the ground.

“There are leak-detection solutions using infrared or thermal imaging but no one else we know of is using microwave imaging from satellites without setting a foot on the field,” Guy tells ISRAEL21c.

Read details at original news source: jewishbusinessnews.com

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Taxonomy

• Leakage
• Leakage Reduction