A probabilistic approach to reliability analysis of district heating networks Incorporation censoring: A report of implementation experiences

Reliability analysis has the potential to provide actionable insight into the failure probability of assets in district heating networks. Information about the failure rate and its trend may help operators and asset managers replace assets at the optimal time, which can increase the security of supply, save on resources, and operation and maintenance costs. In this paper, we employ a probabilistic proportional hazard modeling approach to reliability analysis, which has not been used for district heating pipes before, and explore its potential and report our experiences. The model allows us to model the time-dependent survival probability of pipe assets as a function of asset-related and environmental predictors. These are predictors that have been shown to influence failure probability in previous studies. We find that the application of the model in this domain is challenged by several issues pertaining to data, one of which we attempt to remedy with a simple imputation strategy.