Future inspection and deterioration prediction capabilities for buried distributed water infrastructure

This paper examines the role for pipe deterioration prediction approaches for optimising maintenance, repair and rehabilitation of buried water supply, wastewater collection and drainage networks. It is appreciated that there are other ancillary assets within water supply and wastewater collection and drainage networks, but these were not considered in this paper. Currently there are a range of asset condition assessment frameworks, mainly based on asset defect location, identification and characterisation. These are infrequently applied in practice, mainly due to the restricted availability of asset defect inspection data. The paper reviews current deterioration modelling approaches and highlights the crucial need for broader, richer data sets (including both asset and surrounding environment data) to inform the development and application of such approaches. The paper describes what could be considered as an expanded “ideal” data set for deterioration modelling at a network and individual asset scale and indicates emerging new inspection technologies that should be capable of meeting the enhanced data needs.