Geospatial-based hydraulic simulation of pressure‑dependent water losses in Mutare’s water distribution network: a pressure‑weighted emitter coefficient approach

The application of hydraulic modelling for water loss reduction in a water distribution network (WDN) is essential for effective non-revenue water (NRW) management. This study develops a geospatial-based hydraulic model and a pressure-weighted emitter coefficient modelling approach for a section of Mutare’s WDN, the Hobhouse Reservoir Water Supply Zone (HRWSZ). The geospatial-based hydraulic model was developed using QEPANET version 2.5.6. Water losses of 22.52 L/s (58.2% of SIV) were distributed based on established pressure-weights among seven selected nodes. The hydraulic model was run using a pressure-driven analysis (PDA) in EPANET version 2.2, for simulating water losses. In two iterations, the proposed leakage modelling method achieved a 6.0% error in total leakage volume between modelled and field-measured water losses. Thus, the proposed method achieves high accuracy in leakage modelling and is not iterative-intensive. It was recommended that Mutare adopts the proposed leakage modelling approach for NRW reduction decision-making.