Abstract Description: Recent catastrophic utility water main failures on both sides of the country have made Canadians painfully aware of the critical importance this infrastructure plays in everyday life. Less well known are the tireless efforts of Utility operators to improve the safety and reliability of their vast asset networks to minimize such events.
Utility providers generally leverage a suite of condition assessment tools to monitor and model infrastructure behavior, with the goal of accurately predicting performance and integrity over decades to inform timely and cost-effective maintenance programs. Evaluating emerging technologies with potential to dramatically impact infrastructure management is another priority for many Utilities; this presentation reviews ongoing efforts of a major US water provider in qualifying next-generation distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) to support continued evolution of their industry-leading Integrity Programs.
Hifi’s High-fidelity Distributed Sensing (HDS™) technology represents the cutting edge of asset monitoring, providing high-definition, integrated monitoring of thermal, acoustic and kinetic event signatures for over 10,000 million feet of commercial pipelines globally. This presentation reviews Great Lakes Water Authority’s piloting of HDS at their 14-Mile Road test site, focusing on technical and commercial learnings relevant to the Utility Water Sector plus the most recent data from this development program.
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