Application of Expert System in Sewer Network Management

Usually the cost of sewer rehabilitation is large but the budget is limited. Owing to the importance of sewer networks in the functioning of society, the current state of the networks, and given the enormous cost of replacement of these systems, actions need to be taken to restore and/or improve the systems and to prolong their service-lives. For a holistic and sustainable rehabilitation planning, a reliable assessment model is needed which grades existing defects according to the real defect severity and gets most out of the exiting information, being tolerant to imprecise data. Hence, engineers can limit rehabilitation costs by producing software components based on asset management systems and assess thousands of kilometers of sewer each year. Little effort to date has focused on devising methodologies for gathering information about the condition of pipelines. It was not until the mid-1980s that the use of decision support tools emerged as an important element in pipeline rehabilitation. The tools range from simple ranking algorithms to information management systems and rehabilitation models. However, the basic concept of assessing the condition is to measure the type and extent of deterioration that the sewer is currently experiencing. This paper reviews some widespread decision support systems used in sewer asset management and the stages they cover. It also reviews the related studies on sewer network management in Iran. In addition, the article presents a framework and future research’s needs in this field. It is argued that the methodology presented in this paper would help the decision makers/sewer inspectors enormously.