SBIR Phase I: Water Distribution Network Condition Assessment Instrumentation

这项小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将重点开发用于供水管道行业的仪器，以评估一套全面的常见水管故障模式。水务行业面临着老化的基础设施和快速增长的维护需求，同时面临着预算限制和降低成本的外部压力。这些系统的维护失败可能会导致许多问题，包括1)效率低下导致能源使用和成本增加，或客户服务问题，2)水质差导致味道或颜色差，或存在危险病原体，以及3)交付失败，每年损失28亿美元。所提出的仪器解决了全球对市政配电和输电线路状态评估的需求。美国环境保护署（EPA）预测，从现在到2030年，仅美国的输水和配电系统就需要2475亿美元的投资。作为识别和修复老化饮用水系统的努力的一部分，美国环保署最近确定需要“采用低成本的检查方法，对所有管道类型中的高风险部位进行筛选，以进行进一步评估”。提议的仪器提供了新的功能来满足这些行业确定的需求。失效模式可能会导致广泛的负面影响，从能量损失到收入损失，再到灾难性故障和生命损失。提议的仪器引入了创新技术来检测、识别和定位代表故障模式和/或供水管网故障模式前兆的故障。该项目将研究广泛的传感器测量协议，并利用先进的统计信号处理和模式识别技术开发测量数据。可靠的故障位置预测将消除过度维护的成本，同时防止因故障而产生的重大成本。该仪器的使用将使公用事业公司能够更有效地平衡维护资源分配与管道故障相关风险之间的权衡。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will focus on the development of instrumentation for the water pipeline industry to assess a comprehensive set of common water pipe failure modes. The water industry faces an aging infrastructure with a fast growing need for maintenance, while at the same time facing budgetary constraints and external pressures to reduce costs. Failure to maintain these systems can lead to numerous issues, including 1) inefficiencies leading to increased energy usage and cost, or customer service issues, 2) poor water quality resulting in poor taste or color, or the presence of dangerous pathogens, and 3) delivery failure, which costs $2.8 billion yearly. The proposed instrumentation addresses the global need for condition assessment within municipal distribution and transmission water lines. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forecasts that U.S. water transmission and distribution systems alone will require investment of $247.5 billion between now and 2030. As part of this effort to identify and rehabilitate aging drinking water systems, the EPA recently identified the need "for low cost inspection methods to conduct screening for high risk locations in all pipe types for further assessment". The proposed instrumentation provides new capabilities to meet these industry-identified needs. Failure modes may result in a wide spectrum of negative effects ranging from energy loss to revenue loss to catastrophic failure with loss of life. The proposed instrumentation introduces innovative technology to detect, identify, and locate faults representing failure modes and/or precursors to failure modes within a water distribution pipeline network. This project will investigate an extensive sensor measurement protocol and exploit the measurement data using advanced statistical signal processing and pattern recognition techniques. Reliable prediction of fault locations will eliminate the cost of over-maintenance while preventing the significant costs incurred due to failures. Utilization of this instrumentation will allow utilities to more effectively balance the trade-offs between allocation of maintenance resources and the risks associated with pipeline failures.