This study was performed to propose the sewer defect scoring, and grading protocols for sewer condition assessment. For this, sewer defect scoring methods were comparatively analyzed and reviewed for four international condition assessment protocols, which are established based on WRc manual. As a result, we proposed a new protocol for sewer condition assessment, in which characteristics of sewer pipes are considered by segment. In reference to the PIM-3, the extent of ground subsidence was adopted to be of importance, and renewal scores increased in accordance with weighting of defects causing structural backfill materials. Also, defect grades of ‘Hole’ were extended to 5 levels of the grading, and ‘Surface Damage’ was excluded in defect assessment. The addition of ‘Buckling’ resulted in reduction of weights in ‘Surface Damage’ and ‘Lining Defects’.

Sewer condition assessment involves the determination of defective points and status of aged sewers by a CCTV inspection according to the standard manual. Therefore, it is important to establish a reliable and effective standard manual for identifying the sewer defect. In this study, analytic reviews of the CCTV inspection manuals of the UK, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea were performed in order to compare the defect codes and the protocols of condition assessment. Through this, we also established the standardized method for defect code and revised the calculation method of assigning the condition grade. Analyses of the types and frequencies of sewer defects that obtained by CCTV inspection of 7000 case results, showed that the joint defect and lateral defect were the most frequent defects that occurred in Korea. Some defect codes are found to be modified because those did not occur at all. This study includes a proposed new sewer defect codes based on sewer characteristics.