Still on the Walk Sheet

A Controlled Interrupted Time-Series Study of Orphaned Quarterly Meter Reads After Automated Address Normalisation

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement evaluates a metropolitan water retailer's automated address-normalisation release against the physical meters its merges affected rather than against the record set they cleaned. A controlled interrupted time-series analysis over sixteen quarters, with a comparison cohort excluded from the merge pass, finds reads logged against no active account rising by 5.02 per 1,000 connections per quarter at the release (95% CI 4.41 to 5.63) against no level change in the comparison series, and a field audit of 96 orphaned properties finds 91 meters still in service and registering flow. Over the same period the retailer's Record Integrity Index rose from 0.941 to 0.997, and 71.4% of the resulting customer contacts were closed under a code that removes the property from the indicator's own candidate queue.

@misc{slop_04vwr3,
  author       = {Thandiwe Solberg and Joost Nwosu and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {Still on the Walk Sheet: A Controlled Interrupted Time-Series Study of Orphaned Quarterly Meter Reads After Automated Address Normalisation},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.04vwr3},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-front-yard-water-meters-04vwr3/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}