Development of an Integrated Maintenance System for Deteriorating Sewage Pipe Networks

The maintenance of deteriorating sewage pipe networks which is an essential lifeline supporting our life is becoming a major social concern in many advanced countries in recently. Because the sewage pipe networks were generally arranged into the underground, its deterioration prediction is no easy task because the deterioration mechanisms of sewage pipe networks are complicated and the degree of deterioration over time varies. Then, to challenge this problem, the author has been working on the research and development of an integrated maintenance system for sewage pipe networks. This paper describes an integrated maintenance system for the sewage pipe networks combined with the latest information processing technologies and intelligent health monitoring techniques based on the environmental condition data such as sulfide hydrogen density, BOD, pH, DO, etc. The goal of the system is to develop an uniquely innovative integrated maintenance system for sewage pipe networks that can be used to (1) measure environmental conditions related to damage-causing factors for sewage pipe networks from a monitoring point such as a particular manhole by combining the latest IT technologies such as a GIS, (2) predict the degree of deterioration of a given sewage pipe highly accurately and "quantitatively" by applying meta-heuristics, (3) make it possible to evaluate the degree of deterioration of sewage pipe networks, estimate their remaining life, draw up maintenance plans oriented toward longer useful life and LCC reduction and make effective use of various latest diagnostic and repair technologies, and (4) develop a prototype system for a sewage pipe networks in Ube City area, Japan as a specific example.