Leakage in pipeline causes loss of water and resulting in expenditure to the government. Water is a critical source of life on our planet; it plays paramount roles in agriculture, manufacturing, production of electricity, and to keep humanity healthy.Leaks in resource transmission pipelines is a growing concern for the water transmission industry. This creates a need to prevent the threat of leaks and minimize their damages through extensive research in leak detection technology.
Leakage in pipeline causes loss of water and resulting in expenditure to the government. Water is a critical source of life on our planet; it plays paramount roles in agriculture, manufacturing, production of electricity, and to keep humanity healthy.
Leaks in resource transmission pipelines is a growing concern for the water transmission industry. This creates a need to prevent the threat of leaks and minimise their damages through extensive research in leak detection technology.
Older pipes are more likely to break. For example, water mains installed before 1980 were often made of cast iron. Cast iron can be brittle and doesn't expand and contract easily with temperature changes. Pressure and temperature changes causes water mains to rupture quickly. Some soils are corrosive and can eat away at pipes over time. This is especially common in iron and other metal pipes. Eventually the corrosion causes the pipe to break.
Major cause is the identification of the leakage and identification of necessary resources.
When there is a leakage there is no evaluation/ report done for future references or studies , hence making it impossible to identify patterns and proper solutions.
There are no proper systems available to get approvals and now the new approval system requires the contractor to approach officials with a letter which takes more than 3 days . This causes contractors to dug a site, identify a leak but leave it open for days until they get approval to fix the leakages.
Older pipes are more likely to break. This would help in monitoring older pipelines more and
conducting periodic checks to make sure repairs/ measures are done before the pipelines degrade.A map- that can pin point exact locations of pipelines with variety of factors -
1.Age
2.Material
3.Size
4.Soil type
5.Pressure and capacity of pipe
First step is to identify the leakages. Implementation of methods to identify the best identification of leakages.Diagnosing the probelm- understanding the reasons for leakage to ensure right people/ resources are being deployed to rectify the problemRecover- Ensuring best practices to rectify the leakage and report to the concerned authorities.
Taking simple inspiration from the delivery apps- Connecting all service people-directly as an employee so that whenever a leak is detected the concerned person is also notified- to rectify the problems immediately.
After a comment from one of my initial interviewees, I became curious about the deeper nature of process of government. Based on the initial interviewee's comments, I decided to probe further with a number of other specific people to see if there was a common thread. The criteria for this set of users was whether they themselves were General public volunteers in reporting the problems, contractors who identify the leaks and government officials who directly are monitoring the process
With the knowledge of design thinking & basic systems of underground pipelines, I conducted interviews with general public, plumber and technicians . I further took statements of local and regional authorities from online resources.
" It was like contractors would dig up roads and leave it such as for a long time. They would also erect barcodes and block roads causing traffic congestion.
-How are the traditional practices carried out right now?
-To what extent are digital tools already being used for detecting leakages?
-What are the major obstacles the general public and the technicians face while the issue is being raised?
-How does natural calamities play a role in the leakage and detections?
A resident said that water had been leaking for many years from the pipeline located along the Outer Ring Road and no steps were taken to attend the leakage. “Hundreds of litre of water get wasted every day for over two years now”, and no authorities take necessary actions.
Abdul Rasheed, assistant engineer at Jal Nigam, said “The water pipelines are almost 50-60 years old and is being replaced with a new one under the Smart City project. The existing pipeline is damaged at several places but the new one will be streamlined.”
The contractors responsibilities are very minimal and no auditing is done after the leakage is fixed. Resulting in no additional resources for the authorities.The residents stated ” To fix one pipeline, they excavate the rods and keep it open for almost a month. It is disturbing the environment and all the public activities for very long period.”
Synthesizing the data from the interviews, I was able to form three distinct user personas and their pain points. This subsequently allowed me to write definitive problem and hypothesis statements, and formulate their user journeys.
In this stage, I combed through the current user journey . The user journey maps helped me understand the problems users faced on their paths. It also helped reduce the impact of my own designer biases, by understanding how users think and feels though every step. This new comprehension allowed me to recognize roadblocks and pain points to correct, by identifying improvement opportunities.
As we move further further away from the define stage, into the ideate stage, we can focus on the design ideation, and begin to brainstorm solutions to our problem statements. With basic user journey in mind, I started to work on Crazy 8s to come up different ideas to arrive at the information architecture of the app
Identify gaps and opportunities:
-How might we design a system that keeps track of the user's tickets and concerns?
-How might we incorporate the user pain point of needing a helpline?
Three ideas generated with Crazy Eights:
-The priority of this app is structure and organisation for an easy flow, so focus will be on the tracking projects and identify right leak points.
-With this in mind, it could have a consistent link to the helpline/report page -Have an area where the users can note down problems from contractors, things they see are going wrong and report it to authorities
-Also provide them with option to volunteer if they can contribute in rectifying the repairs soon.
In the design stage I started with an information architecture sitemap, followed by paper wireframes, then digital wire frames for both mobile and desktop, and finally a low-fidelity prototype of both mobile and desktop.
I then started sketching out low fidelity wireframes and then turning them into first iteration mockup prototypes for all three stakeholders.
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