Water Asset Management International 3.2 (2007) 04-11

An innovative model for sustainable cost effective management of stormwater drainage assets

Arasu Kannapiran, Amit Chanan, Gurmeet Singh, Photios Tambosis

Assets and Services, Kogarah Council
Kogarah
Australia

Jeku Jeyakumaran, Jaya Kandasamy

Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology
Sydney
Australia

Stormwater drainage is one of the important infrastructures of any modern urban city. A well planned, operated and maintained stormwater system should drain stormwater runoff effectively during normal periods and during floods. However, with rapidly expanding cities, unanticipated problems from changinf land usage, system overloading, pollution and deteriorating environment cause problems to stormwater assets and contribute to its failure. These issues are more problematic in larger and older cities where replacement is costly. Kogarah Council, a local government authority in Sydney, Australia, is anticipated to face many of the challenges this problem poses as it manages the urban water cycle system in an integrated manner to protect, restore and enhance the stormwater assets. The council owns a significant part of these assets that were constructed back in the 1930s.

There are a large number of physical and environmental factors which are significant in affecting the asset life of the stormwater system. The council possesses a large database of information pertaining to its infrastructure. Most of the data is available in a subjective form, and does not favour a typical engineering analysis. In this regard, a more practical and scientific approach using fuzzy logic was identified as suitable for modelling the deterioration of assets. This method is more powerful when used in conjunction with engineering judgement and reasoning. This paper gives an overview of a rule-based fuzzy approach, and applies this technique to a stormwater network. Expert opinions and experience of the council are among the inputs to the model. An asset condition index was derived between input factors and output targets to give more insight of the present and future conditions. The findings show that the application of fuzzy-based modelling technique provides a more pragmatic tool for the present problem.

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