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Predictive Analytics for Water Asset Management: Machine Learning and Survival Analysis

Understanding performance and prioritizing resources for the maintenance of the drinking-water pipe network throughout its life-cycle is a key part of water asset management. Renovation of this vital network is generally hindered by the difficulty or impossibility to gain physical access to the pipes. We study a statistical and machine learning framework for the prediction of water pipe failures. We employ classical and modern classifiers for a short-term prediction and survival analysis to provide a broader perspective and long-term forecast, usually needed for the economic analysis of the renovation. To enrich these models, we introduce new predictors based on water distribution domain knowledge and employ a modern oversampling technique to remedy the high imbalance coming from the few failures observed each year. For our case study, we use a dataset containing the failure records of all pipes within the water distribution network in Barcelona, Spain. The results shed light on the effect of important risk factors, such as pipe geometry, age, material, and soil cover, among others, and can help utility managers conduct more informed predictive maintenance tasks.