Virginia Tech Leads Efforts to Develop National Water Pipeline Database

Virginia Tech is leading a five-year U.S. Bureau of Reclamation-funded effort to collect data on the reliability of the nation's aging water pipelines and then to establish an infrastructure database for resilient and sustainable water systems.

Infrastructure problems, drought, flooding, and population growth have left regions across the nation facing water-related challenges. Infrastructure systems have been neglected and are failing at unacceptable rates as demands on them increase.

Sunil Sinha, professor in the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, Image credit: Virginia Tech

Results of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency survey show that $384 billion in improvements are needed for the nation’s drinking water infrastructure and $271 billion to maintain and improve the nation’s wastewater infrastructure systems.

Drinking water is delivered through 1 million miles of pipes, with many of those pipes dating to the early to mid-20th century with a lifespan of 75 to 100 years. The quality of drinking water in the United States remains high, but legacy and emerging contaminants continue to require close attention.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, there are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States, wasting more than 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water. Coping with the water crisis could be greatly enhanced by smart water pipeline infrastructure networks.

To answer this challenge, Virginia Tech researchers will collect high-quality field performance data on reliability for water pipelines of different materials, including cast iron, ductile iron, reinforced concrete, steel, lead, plastic, thermoplastic, and others. This study will include analyses of the economics, cost-effectiveness, and life-cycle costs associated with the various water pipe materials under evaluation.

Sunil Sinha, professor in the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, will work to develop a national database, named PIPE i D, otherwise known as Pipeline Infrastructure Database, that will efficiently and securely storing the collected data.

The infrastructure database will enable users to conduct performance and life-cycle economic analyses of water pipeline infrastructure systems. Additionally, the database will help advance understanding of water pipeline performance and the development of digital models and tools for resiliency and sustainability that will benefit asset management practitioners and the workforce to aid in better decision making.

The database will also enable the bureau to affordably develop and implement robust decision-support systems to understand the condition and failure risk profiles of water pipeline infrastructure systems and to predict life-cycle management needs.

Read full article: Virginia Tech

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Taxonomy

• Technology
• Infrastructure
• Integrated Infrastructure
• Urban Water Infrastructure
• Infrastructure Management
• Pipeline
• Pipeline Rehabilitation
• Infrastructure Providers
• green infrastructure
• Pipes and Pipelines