March 2015, Vol. 70, No. 3
Features
Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) @ Virginia Tech
In recognition of the national need and Virginia Tech University’s strengths in water infrastructure management, ICTAS established a Center of Excellence in Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM).
This center is directed by Professor Sunil Sinha. SWIM has defined its role as:
Vision — To become a nationally recognized leader in research, development, and education related to water and wastewater infrastructure systems.
Mission – To make America’s water infrastructure systems more integrated, effective, resilient and sustainable through multidisciplinary research, and to disseminate results through development and training programs designed to maximize the value of these long-lived assets.
Strategy and approach – There are a number of researchers at Virginia Tech who are working in the area of water infrastructure systems and asset management. The primary purpose of this Center is to serve as a focal point for multi-investigator, interdisciplinary initiatives related to sustainable water infrastructure systems. This focal point will facilitate interactions with national laboratories, the water industry and utilities while providing a centralized outreach resource on topics related to distribution and collection systems. Research conducted by the Center will help in developing a new generation of installation and repair approaches; new sensors to track the condition and deterioration of installed infrastructure systems; intelligent sensors for real-time surveillance; advanced, integrated asset management approaches; and, improved understanding of the inter-relationship between infrastructure performance and public health. Both public and private distribution and collection systems are addressed, covering the large pipelines serving cities and towns. The Center will also foster development of a new breed of engineer trained in research and application of new technologies for water infrastructure sustainability and resiliency.
Need for research – Clean and safe water is critical for human and ecosystem health. Most cities and towns utilize drinking water and wastewater collection systems that were constructed more than 100 years ago. Many of these systems have not received adequate upgrades, maintenance, repair and rehabilitation (U.S. EPA, 2011). Funding for these needs is limited, and a deferred maintenance, out-of-sight, out-of-mind, fix-on-failure problem-solving approach is the industry standard in many regions.
The current research program in water research at SWIM Center is quite comprehensive, including highlights such as a national pipe database for analysis, data mining, modeling and performance prediction; advanced sensors for condition assessment and system rehabilitation QA/QC; a laboratory facility for condition assessment and system rehabilitation research; a controlled field test facility for condition assessment and system rehabilitation research; a certificate program in infrastructure management; and an advanced asset management training program.
The overall goal of the SWIM Center is to transform the nation’s capability to build, monitor, control and renew water infrastructure systems to be both resilient and sustainable (http://www.swim.cee.vt.edu/)
SWIM Center major research initiatives
WATERiD enables efficient assessments of aging infrastructure
Condition assessment and renewal engineering are critical to infrastructure asset management, now more so than ever in the face of aging and deteriorating wastewater and drinking water infrastructure. During wet weather, wastewater utilities frequently encounter increased extraneous flows and sewer overflows. During hurricane and storm season, water utilities frequently encounter increased breaks, such as when up-rooted trees damage nearby pipelines. Utilities generally seek to determine the causes of such system disruptions as they happen. It is during such seasonal events that they tend to look for which condition assessment technologies they should employ.
In response to this need, Dr. Sinha developed the WATERiD knowledge base (www.waterid.org). The WATERiD project is funded under the Innovation and Research for Water Infrastructure for the 21st Century cooperative agreement between the U.S. EPA and Water Environment Research Foundation. WATERiD is a single point information center for utilities. In WATERiD, they can find all relevant information that helps in decision-making on condition assessment, renewal engineering, underground infrastructure locating technologies, model tools and best appropriate practices. By providing a central location for water sector infrastructure information, users share their experiences regarding individual technologies or products. This knowledge base provides a snapshot of the combined condition assessment and renewal engineering programs of utilities across the nation. It provides a medium for the dissemination of cost, performance, capability, and limitation information. It includes technology profiles and management practice summaries that allow utilities to assess whether a practice or technology is right for their situation.
The hierarchy of information is organized so utilities can contact associates and colleagues through utility HUB pages in private forums, and through a peer-to-peer review process. WATERiD also supplements information about individual technologies’ cost and performance with case studies. The knowledge base contains lists of vendors, consultants, and contractors for a particular technology by regions: Atlantic, Midwest, Southern and Western.
“The strength of scientific research is found in numerous approaches being pursued by individuals with different visions, and letting the research results and industry acceptance/ rejection lead to the greatest advances for the industry.” – Dr. Sunil Sinha
The information and experiences shared through this project are managed by Virginia Tech graduate students who sustain and maintain the usefulness of this web-based tool. Active participation and continual updating of the knowledge base with case studies and performance assessments maintains the relevance and utility of WATERiD. Unlike a static state-of the practice report, WATERiD will always stay current. Dr. Sinha and his graduate students gather information to maintain the knowledge base’s self efficacy. Over the last year, they have traveled to over 100 utilities around the country, compiling over 300 case studies and 100 technology data sheets of underground pipes.
“Constantly updating this knowledge base with state-of-the-art best practices and technologies and engaging facilities in submitting experiences, case studies, and finding out what they are applying at their facilities is very important,” explains Sinha. “Assessing that gap between our current practices and current technologies is an important first step in beginning to implement a condition assessment and renewable engineering program.” Some may find these case studies to be one of the most appealing aspects of WATERiD. Reviewers have already commented about their utility being able to see how a technology performs under unique scenarios comparable to their own. Much like the trending ‘wiki’ sites, utilities can submit their own case studies. Once submitted, editing rights belong to the Virginia Tech graduate student site administrators. Sharing this information is key, not only to the industry, but to researchers and developers wishing to see how products and technologies perform in the field, and where improvements can be made.
The project goes even further. Using an Extract-Transfer-Load (ETL) process, WATERiD can pull information from municipal and utility websites, displaying all technologies, methods, and practices in one place. This capability was tested by the Town of Blacksburg Public Works Department (VA) – this is the first time all of this information has been in one place. It links to relevant case studies concerning Blacksburg’s implementations, as well as technology data sheets and bid information. The application is simple. Eventually, all data will be in one location to obtain information about a utility’s water infrastructure and asset management, and as they update their sites, WATERiD updates as well. WATERiD continues to demonstrate its strength as a repository of information on condition assessment, renewal and subsurface engineering locating techniques, technologies, performance, and cost information. It is envisioned that WATERiD will help utilities reduce expenses by allowing them to compare methods and learn from the experience of other utilities on the effectiveness and performance of various techniques and technologies. The degree of industry participation is increasing and it is becoming a go-to knowledge base that provides information that has not previously been available in one place.
PIPEiD enables an advanced water pipeline asset management
The objectives of the PIPEiD is to unite the nation’s water pipeline infrastructure data and information, to make it universally accessible and useful, and to provide access to the data sources, tools and models that enable the analysis, simulation, visualization and evaluation of the behavior of water pipeline infrastructure systems for advanced asset management. PIPEiD is envisioned to be “a Living Database Platform for Advanced Asset Management” addressing all three major management levels including strategic, tactical and operational that will assist water utilities of all sizes to sustain targeted levels of service with acceptable risk.
PIPEiD will:
• Provide the required uniform national standards for pipeline infrastructure systems data;
• Establish a centralized platform that utilizes a GIS-driven web-based interface;
• Develop and provide access to open-source applications, including models and tools, that leverage the standardized data and centralized platform to provide decision support;
• Provide dynamic aggregation and centralized storage of pipeline inventory and inspection data from utilities, including detailed structural and environmental conditions;
• Leverage the centralized data to benchmark the performance of models and support tools;
• Provide registered users with secure access to analyze their own utility data, as well as the ability to securely analyze aggregated data that cannot be identified by source or location; and
• Provide educational and professional outreach for a structured and integrated procedure to implement advanced pipeline infrastructure asset management.
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