Identifying properties eligible for a community sewerage programme

Yarra Valley Water Smart Sewer Network

There are over 31,000 unsewered properties across the Yarra Valley Water (YVW) service area. Of these, over 7,000 were identified as high risk and eligible for inclusion in YVW’s community sewerage programme.

Our team was engaged to complete high-level planning and develop feasibility options for delivering sewerage services to these properties within a six-week timeframe. Traditionally, this planning process is a time-consuming manual task. However, our team proposed the use of an algorithm to automate it, allowing our team to deliver results in a fraction of the time—while also optimising the network design and grouping properties into defined community service areas that could then be ranked and prioritised.

The outcomes of our analysis provided the opportunity to directly use results in future hydraulic modelling and design investigations. Solutions developed with the smart sewer network tool were presented as GIS data sets, providing information on network routes, sewer type and depth, pipeline sizes, and connection points. This enabled easy import to hydraulic models for detailed modelling and analysis. We were also able to run scenarios to identify lower-risk properties adjacent to the proposed pipe alignments that could also be serviced. The result? Solutions spanning over 10,000 properties.