Analysis of water supply coverage and water losses in distribution system; a case study ambo, Ethiopia

Abstract

The life of an individual is directly related to water. Inadequate water supply, unsafe water resources and inequitable access of water consume time, increase disease and costs of health facilities. This would finally lead to poverty in the area. Reduction of non-revenue water is one of the major challenges facing many water utilities in Ethiopia in general and Ambo water supply system in particular. So, the study focuses on analysis of water supply coverage and water losses in distribution system of Ambo town, using statistical analysis, water audit and water CAD software. A statistical analysis was applied to analyze the current water supply coverage of the entire town. Water audit software was used to analyze water loss components and the efficiency of the system was evaluated using Water CADv8i software. The result showed that the network is exposed to relatively low values of pressure and velocity, which has negative effect on the performance of the network. In assessing the water supply distribution coverage and the distribution network for the town and determining its hydraulic performance, Water CADv8i software has been used. The study indecates that an increase in loss of hydraulic reliability during water flow directly affect water quantity, the existing design of water distribution network of the town should be redesigned and hence this deduction gives room for developing the town in all directions, as the municipality is not clear about the future industrial zone and development area of the town.It was observed that the total water loss in Ambo water supply system is high reaching up to 24.41% of the system input volume and about 7.82% of the total system loss is real losses and 16.6% apparent losses. Besides, the average daily per capita water consumption of the town is 29.73 liter/person/day. In general, the low water supply coverage of the town was highly influenced by the availability of water. However, the main reasons for the high loss of water in Ambo water supply system are the present way of water network management with ad-hoc maintenance and insufficient financial resources of the utility. Thus, it is necessary to identify the losses encountered in the water supply system so as to take remedial actions in reducing the water loss more significantly.