Numerous studies have established a correlation between sociodemographic characteristics and water usage, identifying population as a primary independent variable in mid- to long-term demand forecasting. Recent dramatic sociodemographic changes, including urban concentration-rural depopulation, low birth rates-aging population, and the rise in single-person households, are expected to impact water demand and supply patterns. This underscores the necessity for operational and managerial changes in existing water supply systems. While sociodemographic characteristics are regularly surveyed, the conducted surveys use aggregate units that do not align with the actual system. Consequently, many water demand forecasts have been conducted at the administrative district level without adequately considering the water supply system. This study presents an upward water demand forecasting model that accurately reflects real water facilities and consumers. The model comprises three key steps. Firstly, Statistics Korea’s SGIS (Statistical Geological Information System) data was reorganized at the DMA level. Secondly, DMAs were classified using the SOM (Self-Organizing Map) algorithm to consider differences in water facilities and consumer characteristics. Lastly, water demand forecasting employed the PCR (Principal Component Regression) method to address multicollinearity and overfitting issues. The performance evaluation of this model was conducted for DMAs classified as rural areas due to the insufficient number of DMAs. The estimation results indicate that the correlation coefficients exceeded 0.9, and the MAPE remained within approximately 10% for the test dataset. This method is expected to be useful for reorganization plans, such as the expansion and contraction of existing facilities.
As an advanced study on the method of calculating the target revenue water ratio of local waterworks through the leakage component analysis method proposed by Kim et al. (2022), this study developed a model to calculate the achievable revenue water ratio within the specified project cost, the required project cost to achieve the specified target revenue water ratio, and the economically appropriate target revenue water ratio level by considering the leakage reduction cost and leakage reduction benefit for each revenue water ratio improvement strategy, and conducted an applicability evaluation of the developed model using actual field data. The procedure for calculating the target revenue water ratio of local waterworks considering economics proposed in this study consists of three stages: physical data linkage model construction, leakage component analysis, and economic analysis, and the applicability was evaluated for Zone H with branch type and the Zone M network type. As a result of the application, it was calculated that approximately 32.5 billion won would be required to achieve the target revenue water ratio of 70% in the Zone H, and approximately KRW 10.5 billion would be required to achieve the target revenue water ratio of 75% in the Zone M. If the business scale of Zones H and M was corrected to 10,000 ㎥/day of water usage, the required project cost for a 1% improvement in the revenue water ratio of Zone H was calculated to be 0.7642 billion won and 0.4715 billion won for Zone M.
In order to overcome the small scale of Korea waterworks and to achieve comprehensive improvement and innovation transformation, the waterworks integration was reviewed. The effect of consolidation was confirmed by the integration of the water supply business in the southern Gangwon region and the western Gyeongnam region in Korea, such as an increase in the flow rate and a decrease in the production unit cost. After facing management and service limitations overseas, more than 1,000 small-scale waterworks projects in the UK were integrated into 27 waterworks providers, and Japan also revised the Waterworks Act in December 2019 and is in the process of integrating waterworks. It is considered appropriate to promote the integration of waterworks projects in Korea by respecting the autonomy of local governments, but using a participatory method, a win-win method, and a linkage method. For the integration of waterworks projects, three strategies are proposed: First creating a national foundation for integration (revision of the Waterworks Act), Second establishing a waterworks integration strategy led by local governments, Third forming an external consensus and providing incentives for participation.
The ILI, developed by the IWA (International Water Association), has been used in many countries as an indicator of water leakage. In Korea, the revenue water has been used as a performance indicator for waterworks although there is an opinion to replace it with the ILI. Hence, it has been necessary to investigate whether the ILI can replace the revenue water in Korea. The four main operating indicators (i.e., water service population, profit-loss ratio, fiscal self-reliance, and aged pipe rate) of 162 Korean waterworks were compared with the ILI with the linear regression method. Local water authorities with more than 1 million water service population, with more than 60% profit-loss ratio, more than 40% and less than 60% fiscal self-reliance, and more than 20% aged pipe rate showed meaningful correlation between the four parameters and the ILI. In the remaining cases, their correlations were little or weak. This means that using the ILI may not be an efficient method to represent the performance of the water supply system in Korea because of the lack of UARL (Unavoidable Annual Real Losses) data accuracy. To use the ILI in Korea, it will be required to carry out an additional research to accumulate reliable CARL (Current Annual Real Losses) and UARL data in the future.
This study develops a model to estimate the economic life of the large-diameter water supply pipeline in Korea by supplementing existing methods used to perform similar calculations. To evaluate the developed methodology, the model was applied to the actual target area with the conveyance pipe in P waterworks. The application yielded an economic life computation of 39.7 years, considering the cost of damages, maintenance, and renewal of the pipeline. Based on a sensitivity analysis of the derived results, the most important factor influencing the economic life expectancy was the predicted failure rate. The methodology for estimating the economic life of the water supply pipeline proposed in this study is one of the core processes of basic waterworks facility management planning. Therefore, the methods and results proposed in this study may be applied to asset management planning for water service providers.
The waterworks company is in charge of managing water facilities buried underground, and the management has been centered on manholes. However, since there is no standard management manual, it has been impossible to introduce and operate a systemized managing tool by water service providers and managers, and manhole management has been carried out by individual data recording personnel for each water service provider. When the management is carried out individually, the data to be shared by other waterworks managers tend to be privatized, and consequently, it may become a big obstacle to proceed with many civil works such as emergency leak repair, road excavation, replacement of old buildings. This report introduces RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system which is based on the magnetic field capable of IOT. It also describes the necessity of leveraging the system for smart managing of pipe management record that has been done by hand writing. The RFID system includes RFID marker, data reader, portable computer operating program, and data base server operating program. In this system, the data is managed with a single communication device, and it would be possible to share the information on the underground facilities and water treatment facilities. This RFID technology is expected to provide water service providers with opportunities to develop more scientific and modernized underground facilities information systems.
For the asset management of a water pipe network, it would be necessary to understand the extent of the maintenance cost required for the water pipe network for the future. This study would develop a method to draw the optimum cost required for the maintenance of the water pipe network in waterworks facilities to maintain the aim revenue water ratio and to achieve the target revenue water ratio, considering the water service providers’ waterworks condition and revenue water ratio comprehensively. This study conducted a survey with 96 water service providers as of the early 2015 and developed models to estimate the optimum maintenance cost of the water pipe network, considering the characteristics of the water service providers. Since the correlation coefficient of all the developed models was higher than 0.95, it turned out that it had significant reliability, which was statistically significant. As a result of applying the developed models to the actual water service providers, it was drawn that increasing revenue water ratio to more than a certain level can reduce the maintenance cost of the water pipe network by a great deal. In other words, it is judged that it would be the most efficient to secure the reliability of waterworks management by increasing the short-term revenue water ratio to more than a certain level and gradually increase the revenue water ratio from the long-term perspective. It is expected that the proposed methodology proposed in this study and the results of the study will be used as a basic research for planning the maintenance of water pipe network or establishing a plan for waterworks facilities asset management.
우리나라는 물 자원이 풍부하지는 않으나 수처리 시설 및 기술의 발달, 정부의 먹는 물 공급정책에 따라 상수도 보급률이 매우 높다. 그러나 2013년 상수도 통계에 따라면 아직도 농․어촌을 중심으로 상수도 보급률은 66 %수준에 그치고 있고 이런 지역은 지하수 등 자연으로부터 공급되는 물을 사용하고 있다. 지하수의 경우 매우 유용하고 우수한 수자원이지만 지질의 영향이나 농축산업의 영향으로 인해 우라늄과 같은 자연방사성 물질, 질산성 질소 등의 물질에 오염되어 있다. 이에 오염된 물질에 대한 적정한 제거기술을 도입하여 상수도 미보급 지역의 안전한 먹는 물 공급을 위한 정부 차원의 시범연구와 지원사업이 진행되고 있다. 본 발표에서는 정부와 기업이 함께 진행하고 있는 안전한 먹는 물 공급을 위한 시범 사업을 소개하고자 한다.
3D-based BIM(Building Information Modeling) technologies can be utilized effectively as a means of systematic management of facility information for safety assurance and effective maintenance of waterworks facilities. In this study, BIM models of water treatment facilities that can be used as basic data for BIM-based maintenance of waterworks facilities were developed. Information exchange and generality of the developed BIM models were evaluated by conducting interoperability analysis of IFC(Industry Foundation Classes) conversion models. In addition, the application of COBie(Construction Operations Building information exchange) was recommended as an effective countermeasure to deal with technical limitation regarding exchange and utilization of facilities-related information through current IFC models. The results of this study can contribute to the development of BIM-based maintenance system for waterworks facilities.
Recently, because people are taking a great interest in the water supply system and the related facilities are getting larger, the surge suppression is very important problem. The waterhammer occurs when the pumps are started or stoped for operation or tripped due to the power failure. As the waterhammer problems as a result of the pump power failure were very serious, these situations were carefully investigated. Accordingly, we carried out both numerical simulations to confirm the safety fot the intergrated operating of 1st stage and 2nd stage Juam intake pumping station in which had the in-line pumps. In this paper, it was reviewed that the water supply system has the reliability on the pressure surge, in case the air chambers were installed at both the inlet and the oulet of the in-line pumping station. we are sure that Juam intake pumping station in which have the air chambers is safe for the waterhammer.
Waterworks sludge is currently disposed after being used in water treatment, spending enormous cost. In order to protect the environment and avoid wasting, this study aims to develop high-temperature clay bodies using waterworks sludge for art tiles. As starting materials, feldspar, clay, and waterworks sludge, in place of silica, were used by triangular coordinates. According to the results indicated, the 40% sludge contained bodies showed good results which have low water absorption and high fracture strength in physical properties and color for art tile. The result of analyses showed mainly mullite and anorthite were developed in the bodies. Addition of Ca volume or firing at the higher temperature promoted the formation of anorthite and improved the strengths of the body. When mullite and anorthite coexisted in the bodies, fracture strength and water absorption showed maximum value, but overuse of Ca caused growth in porosity and absorption. The body color was affected by color development of iron. When mullite was doped by Fe3+ hematite appeared red and then increase of anorthite by addition of Ca, the magnetite was detected in the body and they appeared from dark gray to black shade color. Bodies of art tiles using recycled waste materials and waterworks sludge showed comparative properties such as strength, absorption, and bending strength to those of traditional tiles.