Multi-Criteria Decision Making Models for Water Pipelines

Abstract

The deterioration of water pipelines leads to impaired water quality, increased breakage rate, and reduced hydraulic capacity. The planning of maintenance programs for water pipelines is essential to minimize health and safety concerns and ensure an adequate supply of water in a safe, cost-effective, reliable, and sustainable manner. It is essential to assess the performance of water pipelines to assist municipalities in planning inspection and rehabilitation programs for their pipelines. Several models have been developed to assess the condition or performance of water pipelines based on several affecting factors. However, none of them considered the interdependency relationships between the factors. Moreover, some models did not account for the factors' weights uncertainty. This paper presents the development of performance assessment models for water pipelines. The models consider three groups of factors affecting water pipeline performance, namely, physical, environmental, and operational. The models were developed using data collected from questionnaire surveys distributed among water pipeline experts in Qatar. The factors' weights were calculated using four different methods, namely, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy AHP (FAHP), analytic network process (ANP), and fuzzy ANP (FANP). The results showed that the FANP is the most accurate method since it incorporates the interdependency and uncertainty into the decision making process.