Due to water scarcity and growth demand, the provision of water of good quality and quantity is essential to utilities in urban areas. Gauteng municipalities in South Africa obtain water from the Vaal River system. The water demand exceeds the supply there-of. Between 36 -40 % of the water is Non-Revenue Water (NRW) in the municipalities and is a source for great concern. A research study was conducted and it focused mainly on Water Conservation and Water Demand Management (WC/WDM) in municipalities. The aim of this study was to establish if there are policies and strategies in place that are being implemented to reduce NRW at the municipalities. A survey questionnaire was developed and sent to municipal officials. The WC/WDM implementations are taking place but it can be assumed to have very little effect on the overall NRW as it remains high. The municipal officials indicated it is critical that water utilities adopt smart metering technology and can be used to reduce NRW. Pre-paid metering is already in use in some of the municipalities.

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AbsslrocbThe RealNeumn is a tme of mikine neumn based construction Drocess could be imdemented bv an omimisation ~~ on the descriptions of biological neirolls a i d is-simple enough to be simulated on standard desktop personal computers in a reasonable h e . A mathematid model is presented of the RealNeuron that is suited for optimisation purposes. A RealNeumn eorrerlly, has short term a,,d long term msmn." algorithm that operates on the of the model. 11. MESSAGE PROCESSING The RealNeuron cannot interact directly with the environment and needs a bodv ( E ) to do that. The body limits the if ...-... ".,. environmental states ( % E ) that could be sensed i d affected I. INTRODUCTION by the RealNeuron network. See [I31 for examples from real Artificial neural networks (A"$ have achieved some world applications of such bodies. success in non-linear forecasting, pattern matching and in Only the processing of exchanged messages inside the body artificial life paradigms, [1]-[4]. A, , ANN exhibits the caps. is considered This is not a restriction because the externally bility of redundancy and vague representation of information. exchanged messages U s e a predefined co"udcation Protocol However, an ANN still lacks many of the vital features of to communicate with the environment. The communication a biological neural network (BNN), such as the ability of protocol is implemented through the sensors and actuators biological neurons to allow self-modification with regard to objects that is part of the body definition. short term and long-term learning.In the description of the R" and the R" connections, simulation of B~S developed by neuro-biologists does dendrites are not described. A COmpariSOn with the biological not seem to be promising for engineering applications. Recent neuron may seem as a drawback. The main functions of the attempts have shown that simulations of brain cells wn~umes dendrite in case of the biological neuron are a vast amount of computer resources ( [SI reported that it took (i) the enhancement of the surface of the neuron to be able 18.2h on 5 connected SUN SPARC-2 workstations to simulate one second of activity of a single biological neuron.) (ii) the logical processing of input signals by grouping certain By analyzing the recent neuro-biological literature, [6]-[8], a model of the human brain cell has been derived, called the There exists no spatial restrictions for the R" except for RealNeuron (RN), which encompasses the main features of memory inside a computer. The spacial signal processing can biological neuronal cells that are considered to be the key be realized by defining post-synaptic membrane groups that features of learning, 191. This model is is empirically more are processed together and delayed the relevant amount of sound than the classical A " s and the simulation is running time.in real time or faster on a standard personal computer (PC). Doeben-Henisch has shown that the RealNeuron is a specialA. instance of a spiking neuron [IO]. The message processing (or signal processing)...

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