Condition Assessment Model for Underground Water Mains Performance: Fid-Bau Portal

Condition Assessment Model for Underground Water Mains Performance

Popawala, Reena / Shah, N. C.

Abstract One of the greatest challenges facing by municipal engineers all over the world is condition assessment of underground water mains performance. As water mains are buried infrastructure, operated under pressure and most important it is inaccessible. In this situation, condition assessment of water mains is challenging as well as become mandatory to employ management strategies for these assets. This work presents the result of condition assessment of water mains performance by analytical hierarchy process modeling. The model was developed for data collected (2006–2011) from south-west zone of Surat city, India. The physical, operational and environmental main factors and 10 sub factors were selected to assess performance of water mains. The pair wise comparison matrices have been generated to make relative weights of each factor and their sub-factors. It represents relative importance of these factors among other factors. The pipe age is found highest relative contributing factor and pipe thickness is least relative contributing factor. The developed model generate results in terms of pipes condition on numeric scale, which is compared with linguistic scale and pipe condition is found like very risky, risky, adequate, good or excellent. The developed model is validated, which shows robust results of 86.4 %, the average validity percentage. Hence, the model is expected to benefit practitioners to prioritize rehabilitation or replacement planning for water mains.