UCLA

The Wastewater Collection System (WCS) has long been recognized as one of the critical infrastructures in the urban fabric, along with fresh water and power system infrastructure. An aging Wastewater Collection System may jeopardize public and environmental health by contaminating the sources of drinking water and by polluting the natural environment. Although the largest part of WCS failures are caused by aging infrastructure, careless dumping can lead to explosions and cause major catastrophes. Moreover, there is a growing consensus that greenhouse gas (GHG) generated from the wastewater infrastructure represents a significant fraction of GHG emissions. While a WCS failure can cause unimaginable hardship, systematic monitoring of the WCS has made little progress over the years due to several challenges that include invisibility, harsh environment, vast geographical span, and the requirement of minimizing service interruption. Thus far, various schemes have been designed and developed to monitor WCS (e.g., robots, Closed Circuit TV (CCTV)). However, due to the cost and the complications associated with these techniques, only a fraction of WCS are

inspected each year.

To address some of these issues we propose a novel WCS monitoring method based on mobile pipeline floating sensors named; SewerSnort together with wireless manhole beacons/base stations. SewerSnort is dropped upstream of the WCS and traverses a path in the WCS network. While traveling downstream, the sensor detects emergency conditions (leaks, spills, illegal dumps, and dangerous methane gas concentration) and notifies base stations along the way. Also, the data is carried to the destination (i.e., treatment plant) where it is analyzed to detect anomalies. In this work, we design a wireless mobile pipeline floating sensor unit SewerSnort which is a fully automated and end-to-end monitoring solution; develop a GPS-free radio-frequency based localization scheme inside pipelines; develop an algorithm to detect WCS functional deficiencies; develop a simulation tool to assist field deployment; and develop a radio propagation model to estimate the radio channel quality inside sewer environment. The simulator provides tools to analyze scenarios; to trace the path of SewerSnort; to develop a mobility model for a convoy of SewerSnorts; and to visualize SewerSnort movement in real-time and monitor the in-sewer incidents. Also, possible applications of SewerSnort to real-world problem such as illegal dumping, improving the accuracy of GHG emission e stimates, and performing preventive WCS monitoring, are presented to mitigate or to address our important environmental issues.