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Development of a Water Infrastructure Knowledge Database
Citation:
Jung, J., S. Sinha, AND L. Whittle. Development of a Water Infrastructure Knowledge Database. Journal of Infrastructure Systems. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Reston, VA, 20(1):04013006, (2014).
Impact/Purpose:
Mike Royer, project officer, has a Wef Mega Cooperative Agreement.
Description:
This paper presents a methodology for developing a national database, as applied to water infrastructure systems, which includes both drinking water and wastewater. The database is branded as "WATERiD" and can be accessed at www.waterid.org. Water infrastructure in the U.S. is aging poorly and municipal governments are struggling to find easy access to comprehensive information about achieving sustainability of their water infrastructure such as condition assessment, renewal engineering, subsurface utility engineering, best management practices, and cost of technologies. There are more than 50,000 water/wastewater utilities in the United States and no two utilities are alike. However, the lessons learned by a utility in the application of the commonly available technologies can be used as knowledge by other utilities. Because there was previously no easily accessible platform through which successful experiences and lessons learned could be shared, common mistakes including unnecessary change of orders are frequently repeated in different locations. WATERiD is enabling utilities to share their experiences and lessons learned, and is a single point information center for the utilities where they can find all the relevant informatio regarding water infrastructure sustainability. To collect lessons learned and utility experience, more than 100 utilities throughout the U.S and 30 additional international utilities were contacted. The data from utilities are compiled, taxonomically classified, and uploaded into WATERiD for sharing between the utilities. This paper describes a process for developing the database including database architecture, database critical functionalities such as upload and categorization, and future development work. Sustaining and building upon the foundational WATERiD resources has and will continue to take the cooperation of utilities, organizations, and professionals from across the water infrastructure industry.
