Las Vegas Partners with Poly to Rehabilitate Water Networks

The City of Las Vegas water utility awarded Polytechnic's Civil Engineering Department a contract to conduct a demonstration project of a water distribution system rehabilitation planning tool, CARE-W (Computer-Aided REhabilitation of Water networks). The goal of the CARE-W project is to develop a cost-effective system of maintenance and repair of water distribution networks, while ensuring the water supply meets social, health, economic and environmental requirements. Dr. Annie Vanrenterghem-Raven, a Research Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering department, is the principal investigator. Dr. Vanrenterghem-Raven, a civil engineer with training in environmental sciences and water engineering, has been focusing her research on increasing the efficiency of buried linear infrastructure rehabilitation decisions, lower overall costs, and the occurrence and impacts of systems failure. In 2003, she developed and tested a statistical model on a 220-mile pilot area In Long Island City with the help of a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant. Dr. Vanrenterghem-Raven then received a cooperative grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to obtain training on all CARE-W modules and further develop relationships with European CARE-W partners. Subsequently, she obtained a one-year contract to test CARE-W on the Las Vegas water network. In Las Vegas, Dr. Vanrenterghem-Raven's team will develop performance indicators, a failure forecasting model, a hydraulic reliability model, long term economic simulation tools and an annual rehabilitation planning program.