Asset Management of Pipelines

Important results from the project

Stable access to clean water, sewage collection and disposal and heating service is necessity for a sustainable city. Today there are almost no opportunities to assess, examine and repair water pipes without digging them up as a result of big cost and disruption. Through collaboration between researchers and industry (Water and district heating companies), we have identified needs and five suitable new technichal methods/technologies that will be tested at industry´s facilities. A service combining new and existing data will also be established for better analysis.

Expected long term effects

Five new technical methods were chosen as particularly promising (acoustic method, two types of georadar, electro chemical method and a floating device following the stream inside the pipes, registering sound and image). In addition, data managment was proven to be an area of concern for many of the utilities and the project has therefore included a data management and status assessment service to the next step of the project. This service should work as a tool that visualise to the utiliity which pipes that require repair, and the specific spots of the pipes.

Approach and implementation

The project management has acquired detailed knowledge of utilities´ needs and the potential of new technical solutions, Swedish ones as well as international. The project management has actively sought to enlarge the target group outside of the scope of the project in order to secure that the most relevant actors are involved in the next step. This open process has resulted in a partly renewed partnership and five seleced new methods. In addition, it resulted in the discovery of the poor status of data management at utilities..

External links

http://www.swedenwaterresearch.se/projekt/statusbedomning-och-forvaltning-av-ledningsnat/