I-Corps: Data Quality Assurance and Inventory Tool (One-Voice) for Sewer Inspection Data

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the ability to provide an easily accessible and reliable national sewer data inventory that will assist municipal utility districts in developing effective and proactive maintenance and rehabilitation plans, hence reducing the overall maintenance costs of sewer systems as well as avoiding costly repairs due to pipe failures. Moreover, if the technology is successfully commercialized, sewer officials such as National Association of Sewer Service Companies (NASSCO) will better understand the current and trend of sewer systems condition nation-wide; as such, they will have proven justification to secure adequate federal funding for sewer system improvements. This technology will support the nation's agenda of improving the condition of the aging and deteriorating sewer infrastructure, which will promote societal wellbeing and support the sustainable development of the society. In addition, it has been expected that the availability of national sewer inventory will help the industry to find new uses of sewer data and new collaborations. The participation in the NSF I-Corps program affords graduate students a great opportunity to cultivate their skills in innovation and entrepreneurship, which may lead to the creation of start-up companies and more job opportunities.This I-Corps project addresses common concerns -- data availability and data quality -- raised by sewer industry stakeholders. Understanding the current condition and deterioration mechanism of sewer pipe networks is a critical step in improving national wastewater systems, which requires easily accessible and reliable data. Although sewer inspection data have been collected by various utility districts across the country for many years, the data is not in a usable and uniform format for asset management purposes. This technology provides a visual tool to evaluate and report data quality issues and an innovative algorithm to resolve these issues. The preliminary results show that, by applying the proposed quality assurance algorithm to six datasets obtained by the team, the percentage of good quality inspection data increased from 50%-75% (pre-process) to 95% (post-process). More importantly, the proposed technology includes a comprehensive, uniform, and quality-assured national sewer inventory that documents the historical and current conditions of sewer pipelines. Through the regional NSF I-Corps site program, it was concluded that there is a tremendous need for the proposed technology among utilities and contractors because of the time and cost savings that can be realized in inspection processes and rehabilitation plans.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.