Quantifying the effect of proactive management strategies on the serviceability of gully pots and lateral sewer connections

Abstract

Gully pots and lateral connections represent the anterior part of the sewer infrastructure responsible for the majority of flooding events in public areas. This study provides a statistical procedure to quantify the effectiveness of proactive management strategies to improve their performance. The first part consists of non-parametric methods to determine the evolution of gully pot blockages. The second part presents a Bayesian approach to quantify the development of reported flooding events when lateral connections are subject to proactive strategies. To this end, call data were collected from areas that were maintained proactively instead of reactively. Application of the procedure revealed a significant call decrease in one area. In addition, an increasing blockage likelihood over time indicated cyclic cleaning to be effective to improve sewer serviceability. By linking management strategies to performance, this flexible procedure can support sewer managers to balance the merits of proactive and reactive management strategies.