To delive resilient infrastructure for the UK’s water network. It will transfer knowledge on water pipe deterioration from the University of Sheffield, a leader in water engineering, into Datatecnics, an R&D intensive business whose focus is intelligent infrastructure systems.

Water pipelines globally are ageing assets and, in the majority of cases, in a state of deterioration. As it is difficult to monitor buried, complex assets such as pipes, utilities have little information about the health status of the pipe; this lack of knowledge leads to pipeline failure and water losses. The Critical Infrastructure Pipeline Protection System (CIPPS) provides data-driven forecasts of remaining asset lifetimes and predicts pipeline failure, helping our customers prioritise repairs and extend the lifetime of their asset base by replacing only pipework that is coming to the end of its useful life. CIPPS monitors a metric never gathered before in water pipeline monitoring: strain. Its sensors attach directly to the pipe wall, collect data pertaining to actual structural health and send it to a data acquisition system, from which it is transmitted to self-learning, cloud-based algorithms predicting pipeline health. CIPPS is available as a retrofit solution for existing pipelines as well as an embedded system for new build pipelines, allowing utility companies to assess the health status of their entire network with one unified solution. Bringing together the latest developments in cloud-based AI, hydroinformatics, sensor technology and wireless communications, we have significantly advanced the current state-of-the-art and will help utility companies bring down network distribution losses by an estimated 50%. The UK currently loses ca. 2,954m litres of water each day (discoverwater.org, 2020). We have developed CIPPS Retrofit to TRL7 and deployed it on multiple pipelines including a main serving 30,000 customers and a hospital, owned by the UK's largest listed water company, United Utilities Group plc. All sites are fully operational and transmit data as planned with good accuracy and reliability. Having successfully demonstrated the feasibility of our approach, our aim is to now improve overall system reliability and implement CIPPS across water networks to improve utilities' ability to keep their networks operational for their customers. In preparation for this commercial roll-out on a larger scale we need to improve the performance of the prototypes used in the pilot installations. We plan to use the Innovation Continuity Loan to complete an innovation project (CIPPS 2.0), which will enable the maintenance-free operation of our sensors in the field for the first time and re-design sensor data processing using the latest advancements in electronics, telemetry and artificial intelligence.

To enable a new approach to infrastructure monitoring in the water sector through the transfer and embedding of skills and expertise to create a validated, self-learning FEA 'soil-pipe' model to predict clean water pipe failure, thereby reducing water losses.

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"Beyond households, most economic activities, from hospitals and schools to factories and farms, depend on reliable access to clean water. This makes the integrity of the pipeline infrastructure which delivers that water significantly important. Over 6 million kilometres of water pipes exist in the UK, Europe and US, of which up to 65% are over 70 years old. The inability to adequately monitor the structural integrity of these pipes has led to water losses in some countries to be as high as 50% of the total water supply. Water leakage is largely the effect of pipeline and joint failure, corrosion, and other external factors such as subsidence ground movement and accidental damage. Existing solutions employed by the industry fail to detect such effects. Acoustic 'noise loggers' are the most common mechanism but, with limited range due to poor sound transmittance in plastic pipes, they are too expensive to provide comprehensive wide-area coverage. The industry requires predictive systems but current sensors are unable to provide this due to high cost and poor long-distance coverage. As a result, utilities are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their infrastructure: suffering from repeated pipe bursts, incurring costly fines and missing water leakage reduction targets set by the national regulator, Ofwat. To address this problem, we have developed ""Critical Infrastructure Pipeline Protection Systems"" (CIPPS). CIPPS is a ground-breaking protection system which uses the power of ultra-low-cost, Printed Electronics to provide predictive failure detection and continuous monitoring of pipeline operation cost-effectively. Our solution revolutionizes the potential of pipeline infrastructure by embedding sensors to measure pipeline health over long distances. Crucially, CIPPS is easy to install and manufacture. The system is based on extensive R&D work and prototypes developed using previous Innovate UK grant funding as well as through the Birmingham City Council's 'Regional Growth Fund'. This project will be a step-change in the water industry, in particular asset management control. Predictive failure detection allows for significant reduction in water losses, extending asset lifetimes and lowered health and safety risks by reductions in bursts. Equally importantly, CIPPS will enable water utilities to achieve Zero Leakage targets, avoid costly penalties and reduce CO2 emissions from additional water treatment and pumping activities."

CIPPS is a revolutionary new pipeline protection system. In its first generation, it will be aimed at oil transportation pipelines. Using a confidential technology it is designed to detect third party interference or any external damage to the pipeline. It will be able to do this with considerably more accuracy than existing products, i.e. with extremely precise locational services (accurate to the nearest centimetre) and will be able to detect accurately the size and nature of the damage. The purpose of this project is to serve as a proof of market. Therefore its scope has been tightly aligned to meet SMART funding criteria. To enable the vision of the company to be realised, the following objectives have been created which SMART funding will help achieve. 1. To work with suppliers and manufacturers to determine the technical feasibility of the product. 2. To review and alter the design as appropriate to ensure it is technically feasible to manufacture in appropriate quantities in the future. A formal specification sheet will be produced wihin the scope of this project. 3. To contact and establish working relationships with potential buyers to establish whether the technical specifications can meet their prospective needs. 4. To alter the design within technical constraints based upon feedback with prospective buyersof the product. 5. To submit core patent filings as appropriate based on objectives 1,2,3,4 up to a maximum value of £5,000. 6.. Based upon stakeholder engagement techniques and a technical analysis of the product, to produce the following deliverables: A Project Management Plan using APM methodology which describes how CIPPS is to be developed further upon conclusion of the SMART funding (or if market is not proven, how project will be satisfactorily wound up); an interim report at the half-way stage for the TSB; and a final report to the TSB. Total costs of this project are £45,000 of which £25,000 will be provided by the TSB.