Predicting sewer structural condition using hybrid machine learning algorithms

Abstract

Predicting the structural condition of sewer pipes plays a vital role in the predictive maintenance of sewer pipes and renewal plans of many water utilities. This study explores the simultaneous utilization of physical and environmental features of sewer pipes in sewer structural condition prediction. Three (3) hybrid machine learning models which are the combination of Bagging (BG), Dagging (DG), and Rotation Forest (RotF) ensembles with a J48 Decision Tree (J48DT) based classifier were used to predict sewer pipe conditions in Ålesund city, Norway. The classification performance of the machine learning models was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC-ROC) and the area under the precision-recall (AUC-PRC) curves. The RotF-J48DT model had the highest (AUC-ROC = 0.857, AUC-PRC = 0.918) values, followed by the BG-J48DT, and the base classifier J48DT. The RotF-J48DT hybrid model should be considered when predicting the condition of sewer pipes in the study area.