Municipal water main infrastructure integrity management techniques

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Canadian municipal infrastructure includes more than 112,000 km of drinking water pipelines, representing a significant part of the infrastructure asset. The water mains along with other infrastructure in the municipalities across the country are old and require proactive maintenance to deliver service to the residents economically and safely. The condition assessment of existing infrastructure is a major component for the proactive maintenance. Advanced non-destructive testing methods are being widely used for inspection of buried infrastructure for the condition assessment. However, there are two major challenges with application of the non-destructive testing methods. Firstly, the results from the non-destructive testing require proper interpretation considering different site specific conditions for successful application. Secondly, it is generally not possible to apply the inspection technology to the entire pipeline network at a time. The pipelines in the network require prioritization for optimum utilization of the inspection tool and the resources to ensure that the critical pipe components are recognized in due time. The proposed research addresses these challenges through application to the City of Mount Pearl in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.The city water mains will be inspected using an acoustic system owned by the City of Mount Pearl. The inspection data will be analysed at Memorial University to develop signal processing parameters under different site conditions. The results of the pipeline inspection along with data on the infrastructure will be used to develop a method that will be useful for the city in prioritizing the pipeline infrastructure for inspection and maintenance. The outcome of the research would potentially be used by other communities in Canada to minimize water main failure incidents and thus make a difference in the lives of Canadians. This will also minimize the recurrent expenditure of the cities associated with water main failures. The trained HQP will disseminate the knowledge, advance the technology, and contribute to Canadian economy through working in the industry and/or academia.