Entrants to this competition must be:

• Established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs
• UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base, and able to support UK deployment

Canal & River Trust is the charity responsible for protecting and managing a historic canal and river network, with over 2,000 miles of canals. Much of the canal portfolio was constructed in the early 1800s and includes a wide range of ground conditions, embankments, wash walls, canal beds and lining materials including puddle clay, concrete and newer synthetic liners.

Leaks can arise through deterioration of liners, ground movement, vegetation and root pathways, animal burrowing, erosion, wetting and drying cycles, historic construction variability, mining legacy and failures around structures such as culverts. Some leaks are visible at the ground surface, but others pass into permeable ground beneath or beside the canal, making them difficult to detect or observe through routine inspection.

The Trust currently identifies leaks through inspections, risk-based asset management processes and a range of specialist techniques. However, many existing methods can be costly, complex, site-specific or unsuitable for broad proactive deployment. Earlier and cheaper identification of hidden leaks would help reduce the likelihood of asset deterioration, support water resource management and allow the Trust to prioritise further investigation and repairs more effectively.

Canal & River Trust is seeking non-invasive solutions that can identify likely locations of canal leakage and seepage at low cost and at a scale suitable for use across sections of the canal network. The priority is to detect leaks that are not obvious during visual inspections, including leaks that disappear into permeable ground, leakage pathways through embankments or banks, and indicators of voiding or internal erosion associated with leakage. The Trust is strongly supported by a large population of volunteers; it may be possible to utilise this resource and wider canal users for data gathering.

Solutions may include, but are not limited to, remote sensing, drone-based approaches, boat-mounted or handheld sensing, citizen-science-enabled data capture, machine learning or decision-support tools that highlight where further inspection is needed. The Trust is particularly interested in practical, deployable or near-deployable technologies that have been proven in another sector or environment and can be adapted for canals.

Solutions should support proactive asset management by helping the Trust move from reactive investigation towards earlier identification and prioritisation. The solution does not need to provide a complete repair or leakage quantification method, but any information it can provide on likely leakage rates, seepage severity, leakage pathways or potential causes would be advantageous. 

In addition to the core requirement of identifying potential leaks, the Trust is interested in improving leakage quantification, as accurate and easy-to-use methods for quantifying leaks and seeps are currently limited compared with leak detection methods, which are more widely available and better understood. Outputs should provide actionable evidence that can guide inspectors and engineers to locations requiring follow-up assessment.

Leaks may also occur around specific assets, including culverts beneath canals and locks. Rapid detection methods suitable for these scenarios are of particular interest. Your proposed solution should identify the frequency of data gathering proposed and how it will be triangulated to establish confidence of a leak existing.

The solution should:

• Identify likely locations of canal leaks, seepage or associated ground changes that may not be visible.
• Be suitable for use across varied canal environments, including embankments, banks, wash walls, towpaths, offside banks and areas with limited access.
• Be effective in, or able to account for, heavily vegetated areas, as dense vegetation is one of the Trust’s biggest challenges in finding and detecting leaks.
• Provide outputs that help Canal & River Trust decide where to undertake follow-up inspection, monitoring, geophysical survey or other investigation.
• Be sufficiently cost-effective to support broad or repeated use, rather than only high-cost, one-off specialist surveys.
• Be practical for field deployment by Canal & River Trust teams, contractors, volunteers or other trained users, where appropriate.
• Avoid creating additional risks to people, wildlife, heritage assets, canal users or the environment.
• Enable the early identification of potential leaks through regularly updated data.

The solution should:

• Detect indicators of leakage, seepage, abnormal ground/soil moisture, erosion, voiding, ground movement or other features that may suggest a canal leak.
• Produce clear and usable outputs, such as a mapped location, risk flag, georeferenced image, data layer, dashboard output or inspection recommendation.
• Be compatible, or capable of becoming compatible, with Canal & River Trust asset management and data systems.
• Learn through experience of actual inspection to reduce the level of false positives and negatives.
• Where possible, detect early indicators of potential leak causes, such as animal burrows, vegetation/root pathways, ground movement or other features that may contribute to leakage.

The solution should operate in one or more of the following conditions:

• Canal environments that are narrow, vegetated, publicly accessible, heritage-sensitive and operationally constrained.
• Locations where access may be from a towpath, offside bank, workboat, drone, satellite, handheld device or other safe method.
• Canals that remain in water and, where possible, navigable during survey/data capture.
• Canals with different structures and linings, including puddle clay, concrete, synthetic liners and unlined sections with natural underlying geology, as well as masonry, concrete, timber, stone, pre-cast block, soil wash walls and steel pile structures.
• Mixed ground conditions and all UK soil types. Canals can be built in/on sands, clays, gravels, rock, peat, silts and bedrock. Where the ground was made up, these can be highly mixed and include industrial waste.
• Shallow subsurface zones near the canal liner as well as embankment and bank environments where leakage pathways may extend into the ground.

Canals are situated in a range of environments from open countryside to cities. Please identify if there are situations that your system will not work in.

The solution should not:

• Focus solely on pressurised water pipes or utility network leak detection methods unless there is clear evidence that the approach can work in low-pressure canal and earthworks environments.
• Require dewatering of canals or major disruption to navigation as part of detection.
• Depend on expensive, highly bespoke or capital-intensive deployment that would not be viable for broad proactive use.
• Require intrusive works as the primary detection method, unless used only for validation after a likely leak location has been identified.
• Increase risk to staff, volunteers, contractors, the public, boat users, wildlife, water quality, heritage assets or the wider environment.

The Trust is seeking low-cost approaches that can support wider, repeated or proactive use across the canal network. Current spend on leakage identification and monitoring is finite, so solutions must demonstrate a realistic cost-to-benefit case and be proportionate to the value of the risk being managed.

Specific pilot budgets are to be confirmed. If possible, please include indicative CAPEX and OPEX costs in your application.

Successful applicants may be invited to pitch to Canal & River Trust. Selected solution(s) may then be considered for pilot trials on relevant canal locations, subject to suitability, safety, procurement requirements and available budget.

If successful, the opportunity could support deployment across parts of Canal & River Trust’s canal network and may also be relevant to other canal, waterway, irrigation, reservoir, earthworks and infrastructure asset owners in the UK and internationally.

The benefits package for a successful applicant may also include:

• Support from Innovate UK Business Connect
• Support in the development of a prototype or pilot
• Technical support
• Invitation to attend or present at Innovate UK Business Connect events
• A potential business collaboration
• Investor introductions (if investment is required)
• Support if any Innovate UK or similar competitions are relevant.