Water distribution network in cities is complicated and damage to pipes can occur in the form of leakage causing economic losses. Early detection of abnormalities and accurate determination of damage location are required. Cumulative sum (CUSUM) test, wavelet-based method, and point localization have been used. However, low accuracy in noisy situation, loss of time information, and absence of mathematical reliability remain unsolved issues. In this paper, we propose a new robust algorithm that detects leakage in water network addressing these issues using pressure measurements. This method consists of cumulative integral of shifted pressure data, floor function with three parameters followed by curvature function, and localization based on statistical estimation. Verification was performed using two different field leakage data sets and normal data sets. The detection scheme exhibits much fewer false alarms and localization is more practical to implement in real networks than the previous methods. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.