Valve Criticality: Determine the Risk of Your Valves before You Risk Your Valves or Worse!

Valve Criticality is an analysis of select valve assets in transmission and/or distribution systems. The goal of criticality evaluations is determining the relative importance, typically by calculating a “Total Risk Score” (TRS), of each valve in the system. Effective valve criticality evaluations are dependent on completing a robust valve inventory database (VID), a collection of physical and operational valve characteristics. VID development should be accompanied by a hydraulic model, which can provide automated measurement of valve characteristics on a large scale for data points typically unavailable to the utility. Valve attributes from the VID and model are categorized by their effect on the valve’s probability of failure (POF) or consequence of failure (COF). The product of each valve’s POF and COF scores equates to the valve’s TRS. The end product of the criticality analysis is the utility’s valve inventory ranked by TRS, which supports proactive asset management and effective use of resources.