But Why There? A Data-Driven Approach to Route Selection

Do utilities know the best place to put new pipeline infrastructure? We think so. But does the data support those decisions? How can we demonstrate to the public that we are doing our due diligence? How do we show that the process is more than qualitative considerations? What if the pipeline is nearly 30 mi long and 66-in. in diameter, winding through protected wetlands, 10-lane interstate highways, dense residential neighborhoods, and established commercial business areas? What about estimated construction costs up to half a billion dollars? Tampa Bay Water and Hillsborough County (HC) were faced with these exact questions as they looked to finalize an alignment for critical future pipeline infrastructure. Pipeline route evaluation and selection is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It is usually tailored to the project scope and funding available, accordingly scaling up or down, to align with the end needs of the project stakeholders. For this project, the non-cost evaluation process was broken into the following key steps: (1) screening of a universe of options to a manageable shortlist; (2) a stakeholder-driven weighting criteria pairwise exercise to determine relative importance of key evaluation criteria; (3) data collection and visualization: using a “real-time,” accessible, online GIS platform to establish preliminary route corridors and set baseline evaluation metrics to “evaluate” various routes; (4) selection and development of sub-criteria to provide more discreetly definable and measurable evaluation characteristics and quantitatively measuring seemingly intangible evaluation factors such as public inconvenience; and (5) a quantitative methodology to integrate non-cost criteria (unitless) and cost (dollars). Simply adding the two does not work, as the units are incompatible. With this groundwork completed, the once-complicated decision becomes an effort of using the data to drive decisions.