Image Description: Water hitting a stone. Photo by Cem Salini on Unsplash

Amazon and water technology company Aganova are rolling out an AI‑driven leak detection project in Bergamo’s water distribution network, working with local utility Uniacque. The system, which runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, monitors flows in large transmission mains and flags anomalies that may indicate leaks, sending location data to repair teams.

The scale of water loss in Italy

Italy loses more than 40 per cent of water entering its public networks to leakage, one of the highest rates in Europe, according to the Bergamo project announcement.

For utilities like Uniacque, which manages Bergamo’s integrated water service, cutting losses has become a strategic priority alongside securing new sources. The Bergamo project will survey about 64 kilometres of large‑diameter pipelines over ten years and is expected to save around 200 million litres of water annually – roughly equivalent to the yearly consumption of about 1,300 households, the partners said in the project overview.

How the technology works

Aganova’s equipment uses acoustic sensors to detect the distinctive sound patterns of water escaping under pressure in buried pipe. Those signals are processed in AWS, where machine learning models help distinguish genuine leaks from background noise such as pumps, traffic or other vibrations. When a leak signal is confirmed, the system can reportedly narrow its likely location to within a few metres, reducing the need for exploratory excavations and allowing repair crews to focus works more precisely.

Similar technology has already been deployed in other cities, including a long‑term project in São Paulo, where utilities are also under pressure to reduce losses from ageing networks, according to the same AI‑powered leak detection case study.

Bergamo’s initiative forms part of a broader push to use data and digital tools to extend the life of existing assets rather than relying solely on costly network replacement.

Measuring success

Water savings from the Bergamo project will be assessed annually using the Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting methodology, a standard framework used in leak reduction and water stewardship programmes to track how much treated water remains in supply rather than being lost through leaks over the ten‑year term.

The Bergamo initiative is detailed in a recent article on Amazon and Aganova’s AI‑powered water loss reduction project.