10076017Automated Sewer Defect Identification for Rapid Sewer Inspection (ASDER)– An application of Privacy and Transparency-Focused Artificial IntelligenceClosedGrant for R&DInnovate UKThe UK has a network of over 393,460 kms of sewers (Department for International Trade, 2023) which collect over 11 billion litres of wastewater treated at over 9,000 sewage treatment works (DEFRA,2022; The Independent, 2014). Factors including the sewers being mostly overaged (over 100 years old), increased rapid urbanisation leading to acute under-capacity, frequent extreme weather events and inappropriate disposal, all cause the sewers to experience intermittent collapse, blockages, and particularly incessant leaks and associated pollution episodes. Sewer leaks/discharge cause pollution of 64% of UK water bodies (UK Parliament Committee,2022). Consequently, punitive fines are being issued by courts with record £90m fine for Southern Water in 2021 (Environment Agency,2021) and plans for £250m fines are currently in the works (DEFRA,2023). These penalties are devasting and revenue-decimating hence sewer owners are now desperate to avoid leaks. Avoidance comes mainly through frequent inspections that begets quick intervention. The sewer inspection process is however inefficient, causing many sewer inspection companies to struggle with backlog. It involves sending cabled horizontal robots with CCTV cameras into the sewer through a manhole or inspection chamber. The robot is controlled remotely from a van with access to the CCTV videos. The controller, a sewer inspector, moves the robot slowly, pans the camera circumferentially to check for defects at every metre, and documents each defect. This process can take 10days for one-kilometre sewer length. The video and document are assessed in the office to produce a defect inspection report on another day, leading to 11days (i.e., 15,840-minutes). Sewer companies' multiple vans/inspectors have not solved the backlog issue. There is therefore an unmet market need for a highly efficient sewer inspection process to enable frequent inspection. This project (ASDER) will develop Artificial Intelligence and Big Data models that will automatically identify defects from sewer inspection videos in 5-minutes and produce reports that can be used to verify results for transparency (trustworthy AI). This will mean that inspection robots can go through sewers at a reasonable pace (e.g., 6km/hr) simply for video capture, completing a one-kilometre sewer video capture in 10-mins. This total of 15mins represents over 1000% productivity increase on the average 11-days used currently and will enable a lot more inspections in a short space of time thus helping clear backlogs, reduce costs, avoid pollution episodes and associated fines and increase sustainability among other benefits.