Leak Alert: Scalable Water Leakage Detection and Reporting Platform
Executive Summary
Leak Alert is a cloud-powered AI platform that transforms how water leaks are detected, verified, and resolved in South Africa. By combining citizen engagement, AI-based leak verification, and municipal dashboards, the platform aims to reduce non-revenue water losses that account for 37% of national water waste. Built on Azure technologies, Leak Alert offers scalable, real-time reporting tools with significant social, economic, and environmental benefits.
A comprehensive solution powered by Computer Vision and Cloud Technologies to address water scarcity through efficient leak detection and reporting, particularly in South Africa where municipal and residential pipeline leakages account for significant water losses. This platform enables citizens to report water leaks using AI verification while providing municipalities with tools for effective response and management.

by Refentse Moeng

Problem Statement
South Africa faces a critical water conservation challenge, losing an estimated 37% of its water due to non-revenue water (NRW), with leaks being the primary contributor. This substantial loss not only represents financial waste but also exacerbates water scarcity in a region already struggling with resource management.
Traditional leak reporting methods have proven inadequate for addressing this crisis. These conventional approaches suffer from multiple deficiencies:
  • Slow response times between report submission and repair action
  • Unreliable verification processes that cannot confirm the severity or existence of reported leaks
  • Lack of centralized data collection for strategic infrastructure planning
  • Minimal citizen engagement in water conservation efforts
Municipalities often operate with limited technological resources, making it difficult to monitor their water infrastructure effectively. Without real-time data and verification tools, they struggle to prioritize repair efforts based on severity, location, or potential water loss volume.
Leak Alert addresses these challenges by creating a technology-driven solution that transforms how water leakages are reported, verified, and managed. By combining citizen engagement with artificial intelligence verification and municipal dashboards, the platform creates an ecosystem for rapid response to water infrastructure failures.
Project Goals and Objectives
Leak Alert aims to revolutionize water conservation efforts through technology-enabled citizen participation and municipal response. Our comprehensive approach addresses both the reporting and management aspects of water leakage detection.
Develop a Scalable Web Application
Create a user-friendly platform using ASP.NET MVC that can scale to national levels while maintaining performance and reliability.
Enable Multimedia Reporting
Empower users to submit leak reports with geolocation data and multimedia evidence for verification and documentation.
Implement AI Verification
Utilize Azure Custom Vision to automatically analyze and verify reports for authenticity, reducing false positives.
Establish Robust Data Management
Store and manage data securely in Azure SQL Database with appropriate access controls and backup protocols.
Provide Municipal Dashboard
Deliver comprehensive analytics and management tools for authorities to track, prioritize, and respond to reported leaks.
Additional objectives include integrating with Azure Maps for spatial analytics and planning, ensuring adherence to data security and privacy best practices, and creating a platform that can evolve with emerging technologies and changing user needs.
Target Market and Beneficiaries
Leak Alert serves a diverse ecosystem of stakeholders across South Africa, creating value for both individual citizens and institutional entities concerned with water conservation and infrastructure management.
Citizens and Community Leaders
The primary users of the reporting functionality, empowered to take action when they observe water leakages in their communities. The platform gives them a direct channel to authorities and visibility into the status of their reports, fostering civic engagement and environmental stewardship.
Municipal Water Services Departments
The key institutional beneficiaries who gain access to verified, real-time data about infrastructure failures. The dashboard and analytics tools enable them to prioritize repairs, allocate resources efficiently, and track performance metrics related to response times and water conservation.
Environmental and Disaster Management Agencies
These organizations benefit from the aggregated data to inform policy decisions, resource allocation, and long-term planning for water security. The platform provides valuable insights into infrastructure vulnerabilities and water loss patterns.
Additional beneficiaries include non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on climate change and water conservation initiatives, who can leverage the platform's data for advocacy and impact measurement. Private contractors tasked with pipeline maintenance also benefit from streamlined work order management and prioritization.
By serving this diverse ecosystem of stakeholders, Leak Alert creates a collaborative environment where citizen reporting leads to institutional action, resulting in tangible environmental and economic benefits for communities across South Africa.
System Architecture and Technology Stack
Leak Alert employs a robust, cloud-based architecture designed for scalability, security, and performance. The system leverages Microsoft's Azure ecosystem to provide enterprise-grade capabilities while maintaining flexibility for future expansion.
Frontend
  • ASP.NET MVC 5 with Razor syntax for server-rendered views
  • Responsive user interface built with Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS frameworks
  • JavaScript for client-side interactivity and map integration
  • Progressive enhancement approach to ensure accessibility across devices
Backend
  • ASP.NET Controllers for handling HTTP requests and business logic
  • Entity Framework for object-relational mapping and data access
  • Azure SQL Database for secure, scalable persistent storage
  • Azure Blob Storage for efficient management of uploaded media files
AI Integration
The platform's intelligence is powered by Azure Custom Vision, a specialized cognitive service trained to identify water leak patterns in submitted images and videos. The model analyzes visual content and returns confidence scores that help validate reports. This reduces the burden on municipal staff who would otherwise need to manually verify each submission.
Cloud Services
  • Azure App Service provides scalable, managed hosting for the web application
  • Azure Functions handle background processing and orchestrate Computer Vision service calls
  • Azure Maps API enables precise location tagging and geographic data visualization
  • Azure Active Directory B2C manages user authentication with enterprise-grade security
This architecture ensures that Leak Alert can handle varying loads, from quiet periods to surge events when multiple leaks might be reported simultaneously, such as after severe weather incidents.
Key Features
Leak Alert offers a comprehensive set of features designed to streamline the entire leak reporting and management workflow, from initial citizen observation to municipal resolution.
User Reporting Portal
An intuitive interface allows users to report suspected leaks by uploading photos or videos, adding descriptive details, and tagging the precise location using map integration. The system captures metadata including timestamp and user information for accountability.
AI Verification
Each submission undergoes automated analysis using Azure Custom Vision, which identifies visual patterns consistent with water leakage. Reports receive confidence scores, with verified leaks flagged for priority attention. This reduces false positives and helps municipalities allocate resources efficiently.
Admin Dashboard
Municipal authorities access a secure portal to view, filter, and manage reports based on location, severity, verification status, and age. The dashboard includes workflow tools for assigning tasks, tracking repair progress, and closing resolved cases.
Geo-Mapping
An interactive map displays reported leaks across the service area, with color-coding to indicate severity and status. Clustering visualization helps identify hotspots that may indicate systemic infrastructure issues requiring broader intervention rather than spot repairs.
Notifications & Workflow
Automated alerts notify maintenance teams of new verified reports, while status updates keep citizens informed about progress. The workflow engine tracks each report through its lifecycle, from submission to verification to repair and closure.
Analytics
Comprehensive reporting tools provide insights into trends, volume of reports by area, repair response times, and estimated water savings. These analytics help municipalities measure performance and justify resource allocation for infrastructure improvements.
Together, these features create a closed-loop system that empowers citizens to participate in water conservation while giving municipalities the tools they need to respond effectively and measure their impact.
Scalability & Performance Considerations
Leak Alert is architected with national-scale deployment in mind, capable of supporting millions of concurrent users across South Africa while maintaining responsive performance and data integrity. The platform leverages Azure's enterprise-grade infrastructure to ensure reliability even during peak usage periods.
Load-balanced Azure App Services
The application tier utilizes multiple load-balanced instances that automatically scale based on demand. During normal operations, the system runs efficiently on minimal resources, but can rapidly expand capacity during surge events such as after major storms when leak reports typically increase.
SQL Partitioning and Indexing
The database layer implements sophisticated partitioning strategies and optimized indexing to maintain query performance even as the dataset grows to millions of records. This ensures that dashboard views and search operations remain responsive regardless of the total data volume.
Media CDN Caching
Azure Front Door provides global content delivery network capabilities; caching media files close to users for faster access. This reduces bandwidth costs and improves the user experience when viewing images and videos of reported leaks.
Asynchronous Processing
Resource-intensive operations such as image analysis are handled asynchronously through Azure Functions, preventing bottlenecks in the main application flow. This architecture allows the system to process hundreds of simultaneous submissions without degrading performance.
The development workflow incorporates continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) via Azure DevOps, enabling rapid iteration and feature deployment while maintaining system stability. Automated testing ensures that new code changes don't compromise performance or security.
This scalable architecture positions Leak Alert to grow from initial municipal pilots to nationwide deployment without requiring fundamental redesign, protecting the initial technology investment while allowing for organic expansion as adoption increases.
Social and Environmental Impact
Leak Alert extends beyond technological innovation to create meaningful social and environmental change across South African communities. By addressing water conservation through citizen engagement and municipal action, the platform delivers multiple layers of positive impact.
Water Savings
Early detection and rapid repair of leaks significantly reduces non-revenue water losses. Even a modest 5% improvement in leak response time could save millions of liters annually, preserving this precious resource and reducing treatment and pumping costs.
Community Engagement
The platform transforms passive citizens into active participants in infrastructure management. This engagement builds civic pride, environmental awareness, and stronger relationships between communities and municipal authorities.
Job Creation
Increased leak detection leads to more repair activities, creating employment opportunities for technicians and contractors. The platform also generates roles in technology support, data analysis, and community outreach.
Climate Resilience
Water conservation directly contributes to climate change adaptation strategies. By reducing waste and improving infrastructure efficiency, communities become more resilient to drought conditions and water scarcity challenges.
Transparency
Public dashboards showing leak reports and repair statistics promote accountability in municipal services. This transparency can improve public trust and potentially increase willingness to pay for water services.
The cumulative effect of these impacts extends beyond immediate water savings to create more sustainable communities with stronger civic engagement and improved public service delivery. As climate change continues to pressure water resources, platforms like Leak Alert become increasingly vital infrastructure for resource management and conservation.
Impact Metrics
These metrics demonstrate the transformational power of combining AI, civic participation, and smart infrastructure for the public good.
Why It Matters
South Africa loses an estimated 40% of municipal water through unreported or poorly managed leaks. This not only deepens the water crisis but also strains public budgets and erodes public trust.
Leak Alert:
  • Supports municipalities in proactively managing infrastructure
  • Engages local communities through digital reporting
  • Improves accountability with verifiable, transparent workflows
  • Strengthens climate resilience by conserving a vital resource
Call to Action
We invite investors, municipalities, NGOs, and environmental agencies to partner with us in this mission.
Let’s revolutionize water conservation in South Africa—together.
🔹 Invest in a smart future.
🔹 Empower local communities.
🔹 Protect every drop.
Funding Requirements
Implementing Leak Alert at scale requires strategic investment across several key areas. The total estimated budget of R5.2 million covers all aspects of development, deployment, and initial operations.
Budget Breakdown
  • MVP Development (R1,733,000): Covers the technical implementation of the web application, including frontend user interfaces, backend systems, database design, and integration with Azure services.
  • AI Model Development (R867,000): Investment in training and refining the Azure Custom Vision model to accurately identify various types of water leaks across different environments and conditions.
  • Cloud Services (R650,000): Provides for 12 months of Azure hosting, storage, and cognitive services to support the platform's operation at scale.
  • Personnel (R1,516,000): Funds key roles including project management, development, design, and AI engineering to ensure successful implementation and initial operations.
  • Marketing & Awareness (R433,000): Supports community outreach, municipal engagement, and public education campaigns to drive adoption and effective use.
Potential Funding Sources
Several funding avenues align with Leak Alert's mission and technology approach:
  • South African Innovation Fund grants for technology solutions addressing national priorities
  • Microsoft for Startups program, which provides technical resources and potential grant funding
  • Green Economy Fund investments targeting sustainable development initiatives
  • UNDP Climate Innovation Grants supporting technology-enabled climate adaptation
  • Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) partnerships with water utilities and technology companies
Roadmap and Conclusion
1
Phase 1 (Months 1–3)
MVP Development, Logo Branding, and AI Model Prototyping
2
Phase 2 (Months 4–6)
Pilot Launch in 2 municipalities
3
Phase 3 (Months 7–12)
National Rollout and Scale-Up
4
Phase 4 (Year 2)
Mobile App Launch, Real-Time IoT Sensor Integration
Conclusion
Leak Alert stands at the intersection of public service, environmental conservation, and technological innovation. By enabling real-time, AI-verified water leak detection and reporting, the platform empowers citizens and municipalities alike. With the right support and funding, Leak Alert can play a transformative role in building sustainable infrastructure, reducing water waste, and creating transparent governance mechanisms.
The platform addresses a critical need in South Africa's water management infrastructure, where an estimated 37% of water is lost to leakage. By providing tools for early detection and efficient response, Leak Alert directly contributes to water conservation goals while improving public service delivery.
By leveraging cloud scalability, enterprise architecture, and AI-driven verification, Leak Alert offers a future-ready solution for a resource-scarce world. The platform's design principles ensure it can grow from initial municipal pilots to nationwide deployment, creating lasting impact across communities.
As climate change continues to pressure water resources globally, solutions like Leak Alert become increasingly vital components of resilient infrastructure. The investment in this platform represents not just technological advancement, but a commitment to sustainable resource management for future generations.
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