
Large-scale infrastructure systems are crucial for societal welfare, and their effective management requires strategic forecasting and intervention methods that account for various complexities. Our study addresses two challenges within the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) framework applied to sewer assets: modeling pipe degradation across severity levels and developing effective maintenance policies. We employ Multi-State Degradation Models (MSDM) to represent the stochastic degradation process in sewer pipes and use Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to devise maintenance strategies. A case study of a Dutch sewer network exemplifies our methodology. Our findings demonstrate the model's effectiveness in generating intelligent, cost-saving maintenance strategies that surpass heuristics. It adapts its management strategy based on the pipe's age, opting for a passive approach for newer pipes and transitioning to active strategies for older ones to prevent failures and reduce costs. This research highlights DRL's potential in optimizing maintenance policies. Future research will aim improve the model by incorporating partial observability, exploring various reinforcement learning algorithms, and extending this methodology to comprehensive infrastructure management.
FOS: Computer and information sciences, Computer Science - Machine Learning, Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence, Prognostics and Health Management, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning (cs.LG), Sewer Asset Management, Maintenance Policy Optimization, Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (cs.CE), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI), Software Science, Computer Science - Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
FOS: Computer and information sciences, Computer Science - Machine Learning, Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence, Prognostics and Health Management, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning (cs.LG), Sewer Asset Management, Maintenance Policy Optimization, Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science (cs.CE), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI), Software Science, Computer Science - Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
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