Abstract

Prioritization of Main Replacement Using a Risk-Based Methodology
Track: Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater
Authors: Gaurav Agarwal

Like most other cities, the City of Riverside faces the looming challenge of dealing with aging water infrastructure. Not only do leaky pipelines incur repair costs, pipe breaks also have secondary impacts in the form of traffic interruptions, property damages, service disruptions, and environmental impacts. The City decided to perform a GIS-based analysis to assess the risk posed by each pipe. Using tools such as spatial joins, buffering, and merging, social and economic Consequences of Failure (CoF) values were assigned to each pipe segment from traffic, property, railroads, freeways, and building layers. Based on number of leaks per mile, age, and material type, a Probability of Failure (PoF) was calculated for each pipe. Utilizing the CoF and PoF values a Business Risk Exposure (BRE) was established for each pipe. Based on the BRE, the City was able to develop a prioritized list of pipelines for replacements.