Indirect condition assessment of water mains

The knowledge of the technical condition of the water distribution systems (WDS) is a key issue to predict the performance of the WDS and to optimize maintenance and rehabilitation of the WDS. Common practice employs only practitioner experience to assess the technical condition of the WDS. The presented paper summarizes a basic theory of indirect condition assessment including several definitions of condition assessment, factors contributing to deterioration and possible outputs of the condition assessment. Furthermore, the legal requirements concerning this issue specifically in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic are listed. There is also a summary of the studies of condition assessment methods of water mains. As a part of the intended complex methodology for condition assessment of WDS, a methodology for condition assessment of water mains was developed. The methodology is based on condition indicators (CI) formulated using a multi-objective optimization. The paper presents the proposed methodology and its application in two case studies. The proposed methodology achieved good results and it showed certain significant benefits - e.g. satisfactory level of detail, optional user modification. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the CCWI2013 Committee