Filling in the Blanks: Applying Data Imputation in incomplete Water Metering Data
This addresses data reliability issues for water distribution network operators, though it is incremental as it applies existing methods to a specific domain.
The paper tackled the problem of data gaps in smart water meter data by applying various imputation techniques, finding that effective imputation can substantially enhance data quality for insights into water consumption.
In this work, we explore the application of recent data imputation techniques to enhance monitoring and management of water distribution networks using smart water meters, based on data derived from a real-world IoT water grid monitoring deployment. Despite the detailed data produced by such meters, data gaps due to technical issues can significantly impact operational decisions and efficiency. Our results, by comparing various imputation methods, such as k-Nearest Neighbors, MissForest, Transformers, and Recurrent Neural Networks, indicate that effective data imputation can substantially enhance the quality of the insights derived from water consumption data as we study their effect on accuracy and reliability of water metering data to provide solutions in applications like leak detection and predictive maintenance scheduling.