CIPPS 2.0 – Next-Generation IoT Infrastructure Monitoring

全球的输水管道都是老化的资产，而且在大多数情况下处于恶化状态。由于难以监测埋藏的复杂资产，如管道，公用事业公司对管道的健康状况知之甚少；这种知识的缺乏导致了管道故障和水的损失。关键基础设施管道保护系统（CIPPS）提供数据驱动的剩余资产寿命预测，并预测管道故障，帮助我们的客户优先进行维修，并通过仅更换即将结束其使用寿命的管道来延长资产基础的使用寿命。CIPPS监测了一个从未在供水管道监测中收集的指标：应变。它的传感器直接连接在管壁上，收集有关实际结构健康状况的数据，并将其发送到数据采集系统，从该系统传输到基于云的自我学习算法，预测管道健康状况。CIPPS既可用于现有管道的改造解决方案，也可用于新建管道的嵌入式系统，使公用事业公司能够通过一个统一的解决方案评估整个网络的健康状态。将基于云的人工智能、水文信息学、传感器技术和无线通信的最新发展结合在一起，我们显著推进了当前最先进的技术，将帮助公用事业公司将网络分配损失降低约50%。英国目前每天损失约29.54亿升水（discoverwater.org, 2020）。我们已经为TRL7开发了CIPPS Retrofit，并将其部署在多个管道上，包括为30,000名客户提供服务的主要管道和一家医院，该管道属于英国最大的上市水务公司United Utilities Group plc。所有的站点都完全运行，并按照计划传输数据，具有良好的准确性和可靠性。在成功证明了我们方法的可行性之后，我们现在的目标是提高整个系统的可靠性，并在供水网络中实施CIPPS，以提高公用事业公司为客户保持网络运行的能力。为了准备更大规模的商业推广，我们需要改进试验装置中使用的原型的性能。我们计划使用创新连续性贷款来完成一个创新项目（CIPPS 2.0），这将使我们的传感器首次在现场免维护运行，并使用最新的电子、遥测和人工智能技术重新设计传感器数据处理。

Water pipelines globally are ageing assets and, in the majority of cases, in a state of deterioration. As it is difficult to monitor buried, complex assets such as pipes, utilities have little information about the health status of the pipe; this lack of knowledge leads to pipeline failure and water losses.The Critical Infrastructure Pipeline Protection System (CIPPS) provides data-driven forecasts of remaining asset lifetimes and predicts pipeline failure, helping our customers prioritise repairs and extend the lifetime of their asset base by replacing only pipework that is coming to the end of its useful life. CIPPS monitors a metric never gathered before in water pipeline monitoring: strain. Its sensors attach directly to the pipe wall, collect data pertaining to actual structural health and send it to a data acquisition system, from which it is transmitted to self-learning, cloud-based algorithms predicting pipeline health. CIPPS is available as a retrofit solution for existing pipelines as well as an embedded system for new build pipelines, allowing utility companies to assess the health status of their entire network with one unified solution. Bringing together the latest developments in cloud-based AI, hydroinformatics, sensor technology and wireless communications, we have significantly advanced the current state-of-the-art and will help utility companies bring down network distribution losses by an estimated 50%. The UK currently loses ca. 2,954m litres of water each day (discoverwater.org, 2020).We have developed CIPPS Retrofit to TRL7 and deployed it on multiple pipelines including a main serving 30,000 customers and a hospital, owned by the UK's largest listed water company, United Utilities Group plc. All sites are fully operational and transmit data as planned with good accuracy and reliability. Having successfully demonstrated the feasibility of our approach, our aim is to now improve overall system reliability and implement CIPPS across water networks to improve utilities' ability to keep their networks operational for their customers.In preparation for this commercial roll-out on a larger scale we need to improve the performance of the prototypes used in the pilot installations. We plan to use the Innovation Continuity Loan to complete an innovation project (CIPPS 2.0), which will enable the maintenance-free operation of our sensors in the field for the first time and re-design sensor data processing using the latest advancements in electronics, telemetry and artificial intelligence.