Within the water industry, monitoring is often associated with the measurements of water quality parameters taken at periodic intervals in locations such as water treatment plants and sampling stations. Until recently, drinking water asset monitoring has primarily been associated with large structures, such as dams, reservoirs, and pump stations. The monitoring of underground water assets is special and dissimilar from water quality and large structure monitoring since it is a far more complex task. Underground water infrastructure monitoring deals with the diverse and intricate characteristics of water pipelines in urban settings. As part of the Water Research Foundation (WRF) Project 5191, a survey was conducted to gather insights and trends on condition monitoring for water assets, with a focus on buried infrastructure. This paper presents the results and analysis of the survey, effectively providing insights on topics such as technology adoption, system length and diameters monitored, annual budgets, use of risk-based approaches, utility challenges, capacity building, best practices, and training. The paper concludes by reflecting on key findings and proposing solutions to best address the challenges of adopting condition monitoring technologies.
Calderon et al. (Thu,) studied this question.