It’s 2022, people. Do you know where your water leaks are?
Most municipalities do not. And to make matters worse, new leaks spring up every few minutes. All told, an estimated 6 billion gallons of precious treated water is lost each day in the U.S., according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. For sewage and stormwater pipes, leakage is just as much of a problem.
Finding leaks in pipes is usually done visually. Only in the large water mains is it possible to send people in to perform a visual inspection. It’s a dirty and dangerous job[i] but somebody has to do it. Or do they? A safer approach, and one that can be used in much smaller water pipes, is a CCTV (closed-circuit television) camera tethered to a computer or recording device that is lowered into the pipe. An even more technologically advanced approach would be to run the images through an AI-enabled app to detect the cracks.
AECOM, one of the biggest infrastructure consulting firms, has announced a new product called PipeInsights, which is AI-enabled to help municipalities maintain and rehabilitate their sewer systems. PipeInsights takes in CCTC video and uses AI to detect defects and recommend repairs or maintenance.
“With PipeInsights, our clients can accelerate inspections and dedicate more time to their core mission: solving today’s critical water infrastructure challenges,” said Beverley Stinson, chief executive of AECOM’s Global Water Business. “We’ve applied our digital expertise and decades of experience to mitigate the inefficiencies typically associated with inspections, using artificial intelligence to rapidly review CCTV footage and identify defects.”
As part of an ongoing digitalization of infrastructure, AECOM will integrate video footage and its processed results with a geographic information system (GIS). States and municipalities could conceivably manage multiple sewer programs at once while getting a holistic picture of water conveyance for every purpose.
PipeInsights has been tested on inspections, has captured images of hundreds of thousands of defects and has built a library of images and related them to results and consequences as part of its machine language training. The program can provide secure access to mobile devices so it can be used by engineers in the field as well as in office settings.
About AECOM
AECOM, one of the biggest design and build firms in the world, is perhaps most famous for its giant sports stadiums and airports. AECOM lists Water as one of its divisions and offers among its services, the creation and rehabilitation of pipe systems. The firm’s embrace of technology is an example to the rest of the AEC industry. AECOM uses Autodesk applications (Revit, for example the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, home of Autodesk University 2022) and Bentley Systems applications (ProjectWise). The company has formed a Digital AECOM division, staffed it with 2,000 people, and is now creating applications and providing services to AECOM customers as well as the AEC community at large.
[i] Recommended reading: The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, Rose George.