Today, securing, utilizing drinking water reasonably and excluding water loss are
drawing
multisectors’ primary international and national concern. As a result of the ruptures
in aging
distribution networks, a considerable amount of water loss is challenging the water
utilities and
authorities. The critically important issue is how to locate leakage among a colossal
water mains, of
them the contributed pipes are usually made of diverse materials and laid at different
depths
underground. The present work emphasized some practical geophysical methods for conduits
tracing such as: ground penetrating radar (GPR), magnetometer, multichannel resistivity
induce
polarization (IP) and electromagnetic locator, drew a comparison between them. Regarding
leakage
detection techniques, after briefly refering to all of the water loss analysis, pressure
management,
acoustic methods, and remote sensing-based method, this research recommended some
ways to
unify these methods. The proposed combination of traditional and novel methods helps
elevate the
advantages and neglect the demerits of each method, significantly improve the efficiency
in leakage
detection technique. The paper took a Hungarian as a pilot study, that would be tangible
evidence
for water leakage detection in Central Euro, one of the most famous area for water
resource
management. Moreover, the authors have put forward several coherent theories to partly
explain
possible grounds of this declining water infrastructure that exist all over the world.
Several
geotechnical factors and possibly relevant geotechnical testing methods are also referred
in order
to put forward for further studies.
