Short-term Time Series Forecasting of Concrete Sewer Pipe Surface Temperature

Microbial corrosion is considered the main reason for multi-billion dollar sewer asset degradation. Sewer pipe surface temperature is a vital parameter for predicting the micro-biologically induced concrete corrosion. Due to this important measure, a surface temperature sensor suite was recently developed and tested in an aggressive sewer environment. The sensors can fail and they may also put offline during the period of scheduled maintenance. In such situations, time series forecasting of sensor data can be an alternative measure for the operators managing the sewer network. In this regard, this paper focuses on the short-term forecasting of sensor measurements. The evaluation was carried out by forecasting the sensor measurements for different time periods and evaluated with different forecasting models. The ETS model leads to high short-term forecasting accuracy and the ARIMA model leads to high long-term forecasting accuracy. The models were evaluated on real data captured in a Sydney sewer.