Data integration for infrastructure asset management in small to medium-sized water utilities

Abstract

Water utilities collect, store and manage a vast set of data using a large set of information systems (IS). For Infrastructure Asset Management (IAM) planning those data need to be processed and transformed into information. However, information management efficiency often falls short of desired results. This happens particularly in municipalities where management is structured according to local government model conventions. Besides the existing IS at utilities' disposal, engineers and managers take their decisions based on information that is often incomplete, inaccurate or out-of-date. One of the main challenges faced by asset managers is integrating the several, often conflicting, sources of information available on the infrastructure, its condition and performance, and the various predictive analyses that can assist in prioritizing projects or interventions. This paper presents an overview of the IS used by Portuguese water utilities and discusses how data from different IS can be integrated in order to support IAM.

Data and Information Systems Management for the Urban Water Infrastructure Condition Assessment

“…In a Portuguese R&D project, five water utilities have defined a set of 16 performance indicators (Table 1) aiming the assessment and prioritization of water supply systems (WSS) or district metering areas (DMA) for rehabilitation. These performance indicators were regarded as of utmost importance and were implemented in a platform allowing its calculation after the integration of the required data (Carriço et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, pipe failures may come from a service work order register whilst real water losses in network comes from a water balance calculation. Therefore, the infrastructure asset manager has a hard task every time he needs to assess their systems since data must be collected from different stakeholders in a coordinated procedure (Carriço et al, 2020).…”

“…Nonetheless, the use of these solutions is restricted to the utility itself and most water utilities do not dispose the capacity to develop their own solutions. Different commercial software (e.g., Baseform, WaterSmart) claim to provide comprehensive, actionable analytics to assist water utilities specific efficiency issues and key business outcomes (Carriço et al, 2020). However, the cost of such solutions is usually a barrier to many water utilities.…”

Data-driven asset management in urban water pipe networks: a proposed conceptual framework

“…During the last two decades, significant advances have been made in developing solutions towards the integration and interoperability of municipal IAM tools, which include the development of standards, frameworks and middleware (Halfawy et al 2002(Halfawy et al , 2003(Halfawy et al , 2006Halfaway et al 2006;Beck et al 2007Beck et al , 2008Vanier 2014;Carriço et al 2020). The complexity of data integration and interoperability (levels at which the data can be operated as a single entity) is especially pronounced at data storage and structure levels.…”

“…A review of AM methodologies, such as AWARE-P (Alegre et al 2013;Cardoso et al 2016), Rehabilitation of Urban Sewer Networks (RERAU) (Humbel et al 2014) and Computer-Aided Rehabilitation of Sewer/Water Networks, 2002-2005S & W Projects) (Saegrov 2015), as well as Hafskjold (2010) and Yang et al (2018), highlighted insufficient DQ and uncertainties in data collection and used as constraints limiting IAM implementation. Accessibility (unavailability of data), consistency (aggregation of data), interpretability, timeliness, accuracy, data quantity, integration and interoperability factors were reported which affected the fitness of data for set objectives (Koronios et al 2005;Halfawy 2008b;Woodall et al 2014;Parlikad & Jafari 2016;Rokstad et al 2016;Carriço et al 2020). There follows below a more detailed description of aspects reported to influence objective-driven data IAM.…”