Web-Based and Geospatially Enabled Risk Screening Tool for Water and Wastewater Pipeline Infrastructure Systems
Publication: Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice
Volume 4, Issue 4
Abstract
This paper focuses on the development of a web-based geospatial tool as a proof of concept to assist water utilities in performing a network-level risk screening of their buried water and wastewater pipeline infrastructure systems. This tool provides a preliminary risk screening at a high level to quickly identify problematic (hot spot) areas and help guide decisions about where to further analyze pipeline infrastructure systems. The tool employs a prototypical heuristic risk model developed with the involvement of five experts from the industry, with the primary intent of running the tool and assessing potential industry value. A case study of the tool results and utility feedback are presented. The web-based geospatial tool developed in this research enables the risk screening model results to be visualized and queried in a user-friendly, interactive environment for usefulness at the network level among water utilities.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the partial funding under the grant NSF-CMMI-0801018. We would also like to thank the support of the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) Center of Excellence in the Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. Finally, our special thanks go to the managers from the various water and wastewater utilities, whose kind participation made this project possible and furthermore successful.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice
Volume 4 • Issue 4 • November 2013
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 8, 2011
Accepted: Feb 5, 2013
Published online: Feb 7, 2013
Published in print: Nov 1, 2013
Discussion open until: Jan 15, 2014
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