Scheduling renewal of water pipes while considering adjacency of infrastructure works and economies of scale
Programmation du renouvellement des conduites d'eau potable en considérant les opportunités de travaux adjacents et les économies d'échelle
Résumé
Much research effort has been dedicated to the development of optimal strategies for rehabilitation and/or replacement of water mains. Some of the methods are intended for high-level planning of groups or cohorts of pipes, while others address low-level scheduling of individual water mains. This paper focuses on the latter aspect. An approach is proposed for the efficient scheduling of individual water mains for replacement in a short to medium pre-defined planning period and subject to various budgetary constraints. This approach also accounts for economies of scale considerations as well as harmonisation with other known infrastructure works. A multi-objective genetic algorithm scheme is used as a tool to search a vast combinatorial solution space, comprising various combinations of pipe replacement schedules.