The Role of Resilience in the Rehabilitation Planning of Water Pipeline Systems

Continuous functioning of water pipeline systems in the face of a multitude of threats is imperative to economic prosperity and human survival. This general capability is often referred to as system resilience. While there have been some efforts devoted to incorporating resilience in the design of new water pipeline systems, limited attention has been given to resilience in rehabilitation planning of existing water systems, except in regions that are prone to natural hazards such as earthquakes. This paper presents a rehabilitation planning framework that considers system resilience as one of the principal objectives. Resilience is defined as the ability of the system to withstand stresses and cope with failures. While past performance data is leveraged to estimate the integrity (or robustness) of the system, various rehabilitation planning alternatives are evaluated based on the redundancy that they add to the system. The proposed framework is demonstrated using asset data and past performance data of 10-years obtained from a coastal water utility. This paper provides general guidance to utility managers and design engineers in embedding resilience in the rehabilitation planning and design of water pipeline systems.