Advancing the analysis of water pipe failures: a probabilistic framework for identifying significant factors

The failure of water pipes in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) is associated with environmental, economic, and social consequences. It is essential to mitigate these failures by analyzing the historical data of WDNs. The extant literature regarding water pipe failure analysis is limited by the absence of a systematic selection of significant factors influencing water pipe failure and eliminating the bias associated with the frequency distribution of the historical data. Hence, this study presents a new framework to address the existing limitations. The framework consists of two algorithms for categorical and numerical factors influencing pipe failure. The algorithms are employed to check the relevance between the pipe's failure and frequency distributions in order to select the most significant factors. The framework is applied to Hong Kong WDN, selecting 10 out of 21 as significant factors influencing water pipe failure. The likelihood feature method and Bayes' theorem are applied to estimate failure probability due to the pipe materials and the factors. The results indicate that galvanized iron and polyethylene pipes are the most susceptible to failure in the WDN. The proposed framework enables decision-makers in the water infrastructure industry to effectively prioritize their networks' most significant failure factors and allocate resources accordingly.