Use of transient pressure data in a drinking water transmission system to assess pipe reliability

Aging water transmission systems in the United States urgently require more efficient approaches to risk management to ensure that systems can operate without failure. Water utilities with spatially vast transmission systems collect extensive data related to the operation of the system, including internal fluid pressures. Combined with representative models that describe both the behavior and condition of the transmission system pipes, a reliability framework can be used to quantify the probability of failure of pipe segments. This work adopts transient pressure data to develop a statistical model of the maximum internal fluid pressures present in a transmission system. This data is combined with an analytical multi-layered ring model of the system pipes to estimate the system reliability. The study adopts the transmission system of the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) to illustrate the use of the reliability framework to estimate the probability of failure of prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) segments which have previously experienced failures in many systems across the US.