STFT-based spectral analysis of urban waterworks leakage detection

peer reviewedWater is an essential good for human being necessity. It must be protected against pollution and useless leakage. Urban waterworks is a strategic infrastructure to be managed with particular attention and care so that users must be satisfied. Different techniques are used to detect leaks from waterworks, specifically from pipelines carrying water. Among them, spectral analysis is very interesting to apply amid problems related to the pipeline section. This paper presents an application of STFT (short-term Fourier transform) technique for identifying urban waterworks leaks; STFT technique is usually used in processing speech. For the purposes of this research, a specific pipeline plant has been build in other to feature a real case. The pipeline section is almost one inch; the adopted section makes the research very interesting since spectral analysis, based essentially on FFT, is generally used for section greater than 20 cm