Water pipeline management research needs

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reported that there are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks/year (approx. 650/day) in the U S. and other studies suggest that between 700 and 850 water main breaks occur each day in North America totaling more than $3 billion annually in repair costs. Since 2000, there have been approximately 4.4 million main breaks in the U.S. resulting in repair costs in excess of $44 billion. Research was conducted to study past and present related projects to develop a set of recommendations for a multi-year, multi-project Research Needs Roadmap that will serve as the basis for future Water Research Foundation (WRF) research projects. The research revealed seventy past and current research projects from 1979 to present related to main breaks funded by seven agencies globally. It was designed to provide a comprehensive collection of background project information that will benefit the research community by outlining research needs and prioritizing them based on need to further the current understanding of main breaks. Five major research thrust areas were identified: (1) asset/risk/financial management; (2) condition assessment; (3) database and evaluation; (4) materials; and (5) rehabilitation; two of which are focused on trenchless technologies (i.e., Areas 2 and 5). To ensure practical application of the Research Needs Roadmap, input and feedback was received from multiple research organization program managers, experienced researchers, and utility stakeholders.