Unlocated water loss: Utilities can't find leaks in pipes they never metered
Utilities meter at the treatment works and at the customer's tap, and only coarsely in between: a district meter can say how much went missing across a whole area, not where. So loss is known as a percentage far more often than as a place, the response is scheduled rather than targeted (mains replaced by age, not by evidence), and too many leaks are found only when the road subsides or somebody rings.
Water utilities and municipal engineers · households in intermittent-supply cities · regulators setting loss targets
Why now
A widely cited World Bank estimate, published in 2018, puts the water utilities produce but never bill, through physical leaks and commercial losses, at around 126 billion cubic metres a year, nearly $40 billion in lost value.
Why it matters
The cheapest new water available anywhere is the water already treated, already paid for, and lost before it arrives. Turning a percentage into a location is most of the job, and it is an instrumentation and inference problem rather than a civil engineering one.
From public reporting
Framed from public reporting. Here is what it was drawn from, so the framing can be checked against it:
Work it through with Ainna and it is packaged as finished documents: a problem framing document and deck, a pitch deck, a PRD and more. See the document examples
Take it to a hackathon
Use it as a challenge statement: copy it as a brief with who it affects, why now and the evidence to start from, ready for your event page. More hackathon problem statements on the Index.
In the collections
The measurement gap · Problems where the fix is not invention but instrumentation: something important is happening and nobody counts it where it counts.
Cite it
“Utilities can't find leaks in pipes they never metered.” Ainna Problem Radar, problem 0016, 21 September 2026. https://ainna.ai/problems/utilities-cant-find-leaks-in-pipes-they-never-metered
Problem Radar listens to public reporting, from institutions, research and the press, for problems worth solving, and frames each one to the same standard; Ainna's innovation team chooses and edits every problem before it goes on the Index. Every problem says where it came from, so the framing can be checked. Nothing on the Index comes from a user, and what you bring to Ainna is never published. How Problem Radar works.
Dublin has many homes approved for development, but too many never make it from planning permission to construction. Projects can get stuck because of funding, costs, infrastructure, planning or construction capacity, while people continue to struggle to find homes they can afford. The result is a gap between homes that exist on paper and homes that people can actually live in.
For whomPeople looking to rent or buy in Dublin · young people and families trying to find a home · builders and developers with approved projects · employers trying to attract people who can afford to live in Dublin · public bodies responsible for housing and infrastructure
"Accessible" on a listing might mean a ramp, or one step, or a lift that has been broken for a month, or a toilet being used as a storeroom. The most reliable account usually comes from another disabled person who has actually been there. That knowledge exists in enormous quantity, scattered across forums, group chats and reviews, and the maps and guides that gather it cover only part of it, each in its own terms, so it is rarely there to check before leaving the house.
Framed by Ainna editorial
Framed 21 Sep · High (Ainna's editorial grade)
For whomWheelchair users and people with limited mobility · blind, deaf and neurodivergent travellers and people with hidden disabilities · carers planning a trip · venues that are accessible and cannot prove it
Before a hospital or clinic can use an AI tool, the tool is tested and approved. That happens once. Afterwards, the rules mostly wait for someone to report that something went wrong. But an AI tool does not stay the way it was tested. It gets updated. It behaves differently with real patients than it did in the test. And it can work well in one place and less well in another. So a single test, done once before the tool went into use, cannot tell you whether it is still safe where you are treated today. What is missing is a way to keep testing it while it is in use, to update it carefully, and to help hospitals and clinics see for themselves how it is doing.
