Integrated intelligent models for predicting water pipe failure probability

Sustainable management of water distribution networks (WDNs) is essential to ensure the continuous supply of water. However, the water pipes in WDNs often experience unprecedented failure, which causes disruption in services, flooding, increased maintenance costs, and reduced water quality. Although researchers have developed models to predict the failure of water pipes, the literature lacks fully optimized and robust models. Therefore, this study proposes a new methodology to develop optimized models for predicting the failure probability of water pipes by fusing logistic regression with genetic algorithms. The methodology was applied to the data of the Hong Kong WDN, and experiments were conducted to optimize the hyperparameters and features of logistic regression models. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated using five key metrics: accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, and Area Under the Curve (AUC). The results show significant improvement over conventional approaches, with the best model achieving an F1 score of 0.868 and an AUC of 0.944. These results show that the model can effectively predict the failure probability of water pipes. The relative contribution of each feature to the model's outcome was investigated using the SHapley Additive exPlanations. Additionally, a web application based on the proposed methodology in this study was developed for Hong Kong that other water utility management can benefit from, which can facilitate reliable decision-making for the management of WDNs.