Leak Detection System (LDS)

A leak detection system is a technology or method deployed to identify that a pipeline is releasing product, ranging from internal methods that infer a leak from pressure and flow-balance anomalies inside the pipe, to external methods - including gas sensing, thermal imaging, and vegetation monitoring - that look for the surface evidence a leak produces. Internal and external methods are complementary rather than redundant: internal systems can be highly sensitive to sudden, large releases but poor at detecting small chronic leaks in low-flow conditions, while external surface-based methods can catch slow, small leaks that never produce a detectable internal pressure signature, at the cost of being indirect proxies rather than direct measurements.