Emerging Technologies for Gravity Pipeline Assessment

Abstract

Yarra Valley Water currently has a target of inspecting 500km of sewers per year utilising CCTV. While it is an effective method for assessing sewer conditions, the use of CCTV does have some limitations:  CCTV is relatively expensive, particularly as a significant number of assessments show the asset to be in good condition.  A proportion of CCTV inspections are abandoned when obstructions are encountered. Emerging condition assessment technologies such as the SL-Rat, SewerBatt and QuickView Camera offer a potential solution as a lower cost, ‘pre-screen’ condition assessment. These three technologies were trialed in the field and the results compared with CCTV outputs. The technologies were tested for blockage detection purposes, as well as structural condition assessment. In the case of structural condition assessment, the trial showed that these technologies did not have the degree of resolution to meet our needs. However, for the purposes of identifying blockages, the trial found that certain acoustic pre-screening technologies had an acceptable level of accuracy.