The paper presents an algorithm for the location of sudden bursts in combination with both continuous monitoring of pressure and hydraulic model computation. The Cuckoo Search, genetic algorithm and particle swarm approaches were employed to identify the location of leakage. Their performances were compared. The results show that the Cuckoo Search has a better performance in terms of searching speed and parameter requirement among the three optimization algorithms. The case study results reveal the potential of the proposed burst location identification technique in a real life water distribution system.