About Pipe Risk Management System

The unplanned rupture of a prestressed concrete cylinder pipe (pccp) water main will result in significant costs associated with repair, replacement, and user costs. Nearly all municipal water suppliers have adopted a preventative maintenance strategy to avoid such occurrences.
Progressive owners now utilize electro-magnetic technology to inspect their pipelines for wire breaks and to establish an initial inspection baseline. This is then followed by acoustical monitoring to detect the occurrence and location of additional breaks. Utilizing accurate information regarding soil characteristics, a predictive model for corrosion potential can be established and utilized to predict a rate of deterioration.

Advitam has developped a Pipeline Risk Management System (PRMS), a computerized risk management system that utilizes existing inspection and monitoring information as well as predicted rates of deterioration to optimize a monitoring, repair and replacement strategy.

Principle

PRMS is based on a database including all relevant information regarding pipeline network: design & construction data, as built, environmental data, operation data, inspection & monitoring data. All data is accessible from a web based GIS system.
PRMS includes a deterioration model which is used to determine the probable remaining time to failure (RET) for each pipe. This model is built from Advitam expertise and experience in corrosion of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. It is based in particular on 20 years of experiment made to assess speed of corrosion of various steel placed in different environmental conditions.
The deterioration model classifies pipes by category according to actual pipe deterioration & estimate speed of deterioration. It is calibrated and refined from available inspection & monitoring data (PWave, RFEC & SoundPrint).
For each pipe, the outputs of the model are the remaining time to failure (RET) and the level of uncertainty (UNC). From this two parameters, the risk management approach allows to determine if repair/replacement or inspection/monitoring action is needed. It also defines the urgency to perform the requested action.