Pipe Failure Prediction with Consideration of Climate Change

Abstract Rapidly changing climate combined with aging and deterioration of water supply system pipes present a significant challenge to most water utilities. Water transmission and distribution pipes are most often susceptible to the risk of failure because of their spatial diversity and inaccessibility with limited information available to understand their deterioration process. This article provides a modeling approach, Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA), for using climate projections in conjunction with other operational, physical, and environmental factors to predict/forecast cast iron (CI) pipe failure rates in the city of Calgary. The data from the city of Calgary, which constitutes operational factors, pipe physical attributes, and soil properties, and a statistically downscaled climate data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) are used for the demonstration of the developed BMA model. The result of parameter identification shows that the climatic parameters are found to be less sensitive; however, a significant change in sensitivity over time was exhibited during 1956–2014. The model results showed that there is a decrease in the failure rate for all CI pipes. However, the highest failure rate is expected for smaller‐diameter pipes compared to medium‐ and larger‐diameter pipes.