Promoting sustainable water distribution networks: Modeling of water pipe failure factors and modes

Water pipe failure significantly undermines the sustainability and resilience of water distribution networks (WDNs), leading to substantial environmental, economic, and social impacts. While previous studies have examined isolated failure factors, a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between multiple factors and their relationship with failure modes remains a critical research gap. This study addresses this gap by developing and validating an integrated framework that systematically categorizes thirty failure factors into four groups: pipe-related, operation-related, external-related, and soil-related factors. Through a global questionnaire-based survey and partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the study quantifies the relationships between these factors and five distinct failure modes. The results reveal that pipe age, diameter, and length are the most critical pipe-related factors; water alkalinity, leaks, and acidity dominate operation-related factors; temperature, precipitation, and frost are key external factors; and soil moisture, resistivity, and pH are crucial soil-related factors. The analysis establishes a significant relationship between failure factors and failure modes (β=0.567,p<0.05). This study provides a novel, statistically validated framework that captures the complex interactions between multiple factors and failure modes. Based on these findings, the study recommends that water utilities: (1) implement a risk-based maintenance strategy focusing on the identified critical factors, (2) develop integrated monitoring systems that track multiple failure factors simultaneously, and (3) adopt predictive maintenance approaches using the established factor-mode relationships. These recommendations provide water utilities with evidence-based strategies for infrastructure management, resource optimization, and failure prevention, ultimately contributing to enhanced WDN sustainability and resilience.