Many organisms on this earth need water to survive and the importance of resources is increasing continuously; the transport of water through pipelines becomes extremely important, but there are high losses of water due to water leak pipeline. The problem is not the size of the leak, but the time it takes to detect it. Few of us think about the impact of water damage to our properties until it’s too late and the damage is done. This can cause many consequences including financial loss, environmental damage like floods, lack of water at home that leads to chronic diseases.

The amount of water loss is typically between 20% to 30% of production, and it cost 28.8 Million annually with leakage being the main component in Rwanda. This work focuses on the issue of water distribution, more specifically, on the issue of “water leaks” in residential areas.

The leak detection systems are highly important to identify possible leakages in real-time to avoid financial losses or any other inconvenience such as both time and energy consumption. In this research, the IoT based system was introduced with the aim of early leak detection in water pipeline as a solution for water loss due to undetected leak in the pipeline, the researcher used IoT system as a tool consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded systems, such as processors, sensors and communication hardware, to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their environments. The IoT devices shared the sensed data they collected by connecting to a MQTT where data is sent to the cloud to be analyzed through a developed dashboard.

This research developed a real-time IoT system installed in the hydraulic facilities of a residence, to detect water leaks. The system consists of a pressure sensor and flow rate sensor installed by a water reservoir of interest, a water sensor to collect the data and evaluate whether it is a water leak or not, by sending an email alert message, and an electrical actuator to shut off the main water supply to avoid water losses until the relevant authorities will intervene then water will flow as usual. The result of using the developed system is improving the efficiency of operation, reducing delay time and cost of maintenance pipelines after leakage detection.