TECHNICAL FEATURES
The perfect storm
As the climate crisis takes hold, flooding is becoming increasingly frequent and more severe. This can cause widespread damage and along with population growth puts the existing sewer system under increased pressure. It’s clear that going forward, the condition of sewers, culverts and drains is critical for the resilience of our planet and its people.
These assets have great power to alleviate or exacerbate the impact of increased rainfall on homes and businesses, essential infrastructure, and the environment. And in these days of needing to do more for less, the ability to quickly and accurately extract value from CCTV survey data has never been greater.
Predominantly manual and largely reactive, the current industry approach to CCTV inspections and sewer rehabilitation planning is time-consuming and monotonous, which inevitably leads to human error. It’s also fairly subjective, which makes it prone to inconsistency. Add to that increased demand and customer expectations, as well as an industry-wide skills shortage at a time when budgets are at breaking point, and we’ve got the perfect storm.
A digital dawn
Atkins’ pioneering Rehabilitation Automation Tool for Sewers and Stormwater (RATS) significantly automates the CCTV review process, making it up to 50% faster and cheaper than manual methods. Using a standardised and reliable approach, RATS processes coded .XML data (from CCTV survey contractors) and recommends appropriate rehabilitation solutions. It’s also sophisticated enough to automatically flag up anomalies and complex defects, which are referred to an engineer to review.
RATS can recommend five options for sewer rehabilitation: - Full length re-line - Excavation - Patch repair - Re-round and re-line - Engineer review
Developed by engineers for engineers, RATS draws on the extensive experience and expertise built by the Atkins team over the last 20 years. RATS is extremely versatile, and can be
applied to the water sector, as well as highways, rail and even estate management – anywhere with a substantial drainage system and a responsibility for its maintenance. The technology is suitable for culverts, drains and sewers and works effectively across a range of materials, including concrete, clay, pitch fibre, cast iron and asbestos cement.
As part of an ongoing Environment Agency project, RATS eliminated the need to review more than 16km out of 55km of
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| October 2023 |
www.draintraderltd.com
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