Soil Erosion Due to Defective Pipes: A Hidden Hazard Beneath Our Feet

Abstract

Sinkholes are a significant underground hazard that threatens infrastructure and lives and sometimes results in fatalities. The annual cost of sinkhole damages exceeds $300 million, although this estimate is likely underestimated due to the need for national tracking. Sinkholes can also alter natural drainage patterns, leading to increased flood risk. While natural sinkholes occur, those in urban areas are predominantly manmade, caused by soil erosion from defective pipes, typically due to aging. Climate change, storm surges, and urbanization have accelerated subsidence in urban environments, posing greater risks to critical infrastructure and densely populated areas. Extensive research has focused on soil erosion in dams; however, this knowledge does not necessarily apply to erosion through orifices, where gravity and other factors play significant roles. This paper presents a critical literature review on internal soil erosion due to defective pipes (SEDP). The review highlights that hydraulic loading, backfill type, and pipe conditions (defect shape, size, and depth) influence SEDP. Key findings from experiments and numerical studies are summarized, while mechanisms and knowledge gaps are identified. However, it is concluded that the current understanding in this field remains limited, underscoring the urgent need for further experimental and numerical research to expand the knowledge base on SEDP.

Fractal Characteristics of Water Outflows on the Soil Surface after a Pipe Failure

“…Then, if the leakage from the water pipe does not stop, the water washes out more and more soil particles, the empty space under the surface of the soil increases, and a dangerous sinkhole may form. Such cases have occurred many times around the world and are still being reported [11][12][13], so it is an important and current problem.…”

“…The risk of suffosion in urban areas is most often associated with the presence of water supply and sewage infrastructures [11,13], because the operation of these systems is accompanied by failures resulting in the outflow of water or sewage into the ground. Leakages occur even in properly managed and maintained networks throughout all periods of their operation, presenting a problem for water and wastewater utilities around the world, in both in developing and developed countries, as shown in [14][15][16][17].…”

Circular Mining Wastes Management for Sustainable Production of Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze

“…When choosing the methods for processing arrays of three-dimensional data, we proceeded from the experience of solving such types of problems in the relevant fields of knowledge [62][63][64][65]. The closest analog is the spatial-temporal problems of geoecology: the assessment of the aerogas regime of the surface layer (earth breathing) [66][67][68][69], forecasting the long-term time series of data [70], geostatistical modeling using GIS technologies [71][72][73], applying fractal models [74], deep learning [75,76], or perceptrons [77,78]. In contrast to using splines [79,80] or the local polynomial regression (LOESS) method [81,82], the primary data were not smoothed in this work due to the small sample size.…”

Sinkhole Risk-Based Sensor Placement for Leakage Localization in Water Distribution Networks with a Data-Driven Approach

“…This is a major concern, since many water supply infrastructures were installed more than 50 years ago [4]. Damaged or deteriorated pipes may lead to water leakage, with water escaping and flowing into the surrounding soil from the pipe joints and through longitudinal/circumferential cracks along the pipe [5,6]. Consequences of water pipe failures extend beyond WDN damage, leading to significant economic losses and broader societal or environmental impacts [2,7].…”

“…Since the sinkhole usually occurs with no or few precursory signs, threats to human safety are possible (traffic accidents on the streets and human injuries on the sidewalks), leading also to capital losses from damage to buildings and utilities [26]. Given the ageing WDNs, issues related to water leakages from defective pipes are expected to aggravate [6]. For this reason, reducing, detecting, and locating, water losses due to leakage in underground pipes have become significant challenges for water management companies [11].…”