Prioritizing deterioration factors of water pipelines using Delphi method

There are several studies about failure and deterioration in water pipelines. Each have covered various set of factors affecting the degradation of the pipelines mostly considering availability of the factors. There is no complete and comprehensive research which considers all the factors together and lines them up solely based on their relative weights of importance. This study aims to benefit from Delphi method to prioritize the factors affecting the failure based on their significance. Three rounds of questionnaires were sent to the pre-selected experts and factors were arranged based on their importance in deterioration. 16 out of 30 parameters studied in this research proved to have significant roles and were chosen for further analysis. Besides, the article examines the differences between considered factors in the existing studies along with the results obtained from this study. Knowing the effective factors and rank them based on their contribution in deterioration and failure of pipeline helps the researches to understand the behavior of pipelines respect to different factors and construct forecasting models which predict their remaining useful life more precisely. This assists municipalities and decision makers in their judgments about replacement and maintenance programs.