Digital Diagnosis System for Sewer Pipes

During 1998 – 2000 VTT Building and Transport made research on Sewer Scanner Data. The research was part of the international COST Action C3 “Diagnosis and Maintenance of Urban Infrastructure”. After successful feasibility study work continues at the moment in full scale with a goal to develop a new diagnostics system which is able to interpret very accurate digital image data according future CEN standard (Visual Inspection Coding System). The project is executed in various European countries in co-operation with firms from Finland, USA and Japan. The system will measure and analyse the condition of the sewer pipe. The system is meant to support network wide regular condition monitoring and proactive maintenance. When the service level and the investments for that are optimised according the predicted life span of the network this type of measurement systems are needed. The core of the system consists of VTT´s diagnostics software and a Japanese Sewer Scanner. The system was demonstrated in the International NoDig 2002 Conference in Copenhagen. Now the system has been tested in 26 cities in 12 countries in Europe. The measurement system VTT is developing makes it possible to monitor and to measure what happens in underground sewer pipes. It makes also possible to improve our understanding how the changes will happen. The benefits of the system are better quality, less costs and less environmental damages in the sewer systems.