Sensor failure detection and faulty data accommodation approach for instrumented wastewater infrastructures

In wastewater industry, real-time sensing of surface temperature variations on concrete sewer pipes is paramount in assessing the rate of microbial-induced corrosion. However, the sensing systems are prone to failures due to the aggressively corrosive environmental conditions inside sewer assets. Therefore, reliable sensing in such infrastructures is vital for water utilities to enact efficient wastewater management. In this context, this paper presents a sensor failure detection and faulty data accommodation (SFDFDA) approach that aids to digitally monitor the health conditions of the sewer monitoring sensors. The SFDFDA approach embraces seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model with a statistical hypothesis testing technique for enabling temporal forecasting of sensor variable. Then, it identifies and isolates anomalies in a continuous stream of sensor data whilst detecting early sensor failure. Finally, the SFDFDA approach provides reliable estimates of sensor data in the event of sensor failure or during the scheduled maintenance period of sewer monitoring systems. The SFDFDA approach was evaluated by using the surface temperature data sourced from the instrumented wastewater infrastructure and the results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the SFDFDA approach and its applicability to surface temperature monitoring sensor suites.