Understanding water resilience: the metrics that actually matter

There’s a broad range of challenges that can affect the future of UK water resilience. Climate pressures are intensifying, national infrastructure is ageing and operational demands are growing all of the time. In most cases, we take for granted that when we turn the taps on it will flow. Yet water resilience is fast becoming one of the most important strategic considerations for the government and UK businesses.

Across construction, agriculture, healthcare, hospitality and many more industries, resilience is about having a reliable and cost-effective water supply. Here are some of the water resilience indicators that organisations across all sectors should be monitoring now.

Supply Interruption Risk (SIR)

Not all sites are equal when it comes to the likelihood of disruption. Ageing mains, local investment levels, regional drought risk, and infrastructure performance all affect supply stability.

A high SIR score can reveal vulnerabilities long before an outage occurs, giving businesses the opportunity to plan operational contingencies, implement local storage or shift water-intensive activities. These indicators include:

Historical local outage frequency
Infrastructure upgrade timelines from wholesalers
Catchment-level drought projections
Local hydraulic pressure stability

Night-Flow Anomalies (NFA)

Night-time consumption is one of the most overlooked resilience metrics in commercial estates. Many businesses assume after-hours consumption is minimal but the data often reveals hidden leakage that can amount to thousands of litres a week. Night flow anomalies is one of the most obvious indicators of serious leakage or unaccounted-for water loss. Catching this early prevents disruption, cost increases and operational damage.

Pressure Stability Index (PSI)

Water pressure is a silent contributor to resilience. Inconsistent or excessively high pressure can damage equipment, increase leakage risk and cause performance issues for processes requiring consistent flow. In order to understand pressure stability, it is important to monitor peak and trough levels, pressure fluctuation variance and sensor data from on-site smart meters.

Leak Probability Forecast

A leak probability forecast may sound like guesswork but, in fact, predictions can be made using a range of reliable data – including AMR and smart meter reports. Using this information a business can predict where leaks are most likely to occur based on historical consumption behaviour, asset age and pressure data.

This matters because leaks are the single biggest controllable threat to water resilience in commercial estates. Early forecasting prevents both operational downtime and financial loss.

Redundancy and recovery time

Resilience isn’t just about avoiding failures; it’s also about how quickly a business can recover when something does go wrong. Like all forms of business continuity planning, it’s essential that modern businesses establish and manage ongoing recovery capabilities enables to reduce operational risk and minimise recovery time.

In industries such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing or food production, fluctuations in the supply or quality of water can be highly damaging – both in causing equipment malfunctions, initiating compliance issues or undermining quality control.

A few of the metrics that should be factored into a recovery plan are:

Time to restore supply after an interruption
Availability of alternative supply sources
Onsite storage capacity
Time-to-notification from wholesalers or monitoring systems

The future of commercial water management is data-driven, predictive and strategically aligned to business continuity and at Everflow we understand our role in supporting a more responsible, data-driven approach to water resilience. It requires understanding the right metrics, recognising early warning signs and using data to drive smarter decisions.

As climate risks intensify and infrastructure challenges grow, organisations must rethink how they approach water management and we’re here with them – offering innovative solutions and fair business water prices.