Page 25 - U4SSC Factsheet Ålesund, Norway, June 2020

for only 3 per cent of the world’s water to begin with, and with two-thirds of it tucked away in frozen
glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use, freshwater use continues at unsustainable levels.
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Moreover, global climate change is already impacting patterns of weather and water. This is exacerbated
by urban growth or amalgamation in growing areas such as Ålesund, placing increasing pressure on local
water resources. No part of the world is truly safe from potential water distress. This was evidenced
in 2018 when it took less than three weeks without rain amid unusually warm temperatures for the
Norwegian capital, Oslo, to suddenly face a potential water shortage. Therefore, it is imperative that
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every city and urban region treats water as a scarce resource, and starts to place a far stronger focus
on managing supply.

It is highly recommended that the region also looks into the causes behind its high rate of non-revenue
water through the employment of best-practice water-loss accounting methods, such as the Wastewater
Association Water Audit Method. An advantage of using such standardized audit methodology is that it
helps measurably pinpoint the root cause behind water loss by calculating the system’s Infrastructure
Leakage Index – which is a ratio of the Current Annual Real Losses in the system to the Unavoidable
Annual Real Losses. A system with an Infrastructure Leakage Index value of 1.0, for example, would
have no unavoidable leakage; a system with an Infrastructure Leakage Index value of 2.0 may be able
to reduce its leakage level by half.
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It is also important that Ålesund develops policies that mandate the conservation of the region’s water
resources. This would include developing progressive water-loss thresholds for the foreseeable future.
It would also entail working with the national government to require public drinking water utilities to
submit a water conservation plan for the region that includes overall best practices relevant to water-
loss management. These practices could include the following: supply metering with an accuracy of
± 5 per cent; universal metering of public uses of water; meter testing and repair, and periodic meter
replacement; periodic visual inspections along distribution lines; and audits of customer service lines.
Additionally, public drinking water suppliers serving the region should be required to develop an
ongoing programme of leak detection, repair, and water loss accounting for the transmission, delivery
and distribution system, the documentation of water pumpage, delivery, sales and loss volumes. These
plan requirements should also apply to the wholesale customers of these systems.

Optimizing water resources, smartly: Ålesund recognizes the need to mitigate this and has recently
started an initiative to install smart water meters region-wide. It also plans to work with the National
Food Safety Authority and the Norwegian Statistics agency to improve measurement and reporting
mechanisms.

Several ITU Recommendations from Recommendations ITU-T Y.4000 to Y.4999: ‘Internet of things and
smart cities and communities’ contain guidance on IoT applications and ubiquitous sensor networking
(along with Supplement ITU-T Y Suppl. 36: ITU-T Y.4550-Y.4699: ‘Smart water management in cities’).

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