Criticality Assessment Model for Water Pipelines Using Fuzzy Analytical Network Process
Abstract: Water networks (WNs) are responsible of providing
adequate amounts of safe, high quality, water to the public. As other
critical infrastructure systems, WNs are subjected to deterioration
which increases the number of breaks and leaks and lower water
quality. In Canada, 35% of water assets require critical attention and
there is a significant gap between the needed and the implemented
investments. Thus, the need for efficient rehabilitation programs is
becoming more urgent given the paradigm of aging infrastructure and
tight budget. The first step towards developing such programs is to
formulate a Performance Index that reflects the current condition of
water assets along with its criticality. While numerous studies in the
literature have focused on various aspects of condition assessment
and reliability, limited efforts have investigated the criticality of such
components. Critical water mains are those whose failure cause
significant economic, environmental or social impacts on a
community. Inclusion of criticality in computing the performance
index will serve as a prioritizing tool for the optimum allocating of
the available resources and budget. In this study, several social,
economic, and environmental factors that dictate the criticality of a
water pipelines have been elicited from analyzing the literature.
Expert opinions were sought to provide pairwise comparisons of the
importance of such factors. Subsequently, Fuzzy Logic along with
Analytical Network Process (ANP) was utilized to calculate the
weights of several criteria factors. Multi Attribute Utility Theories
(MAUT) was then employed to integrate the aforementioned weights
with the attribute values of several pipelines in Montreal WN. The
result is a criticality index, 0-1, that quantifies the severity of the
consequence of failure of each pipeline. A novel contribution of this
approach is that it accounts for both the interdependency between
criteria factors as well as the inherited uncertainties in calculating the
criticality. The practical value of the current study is represented by
the automated tool, Excel-MATLAB, which can be used by the utility
managers and decision makers in planning for future maintenance
and rehabilitation activities where high-level efficiency in use of
materials and time resources is required.