Using Drones, AI, and New Tech to Monitor Aging Infrastructure

Dara: In December 2016, the ground gave way on 15 Mile Road in Fraser, Michigan. The massive sinkhole forced families from their homes and shut down a major roadway for nearly a year, exposing weaknesses in Macomb County's aging sewer infrastructure. Hello, I'm Dara Brown, and this is "Getting Connected Powered by Comcast Newsmakers." We're at the National Association of Counties 2025 Conference in Philadelphia. Since the 2016 sinkhole crisis, Macomb County has been working behind the scenes utilizing A.I. and drone technology to prevent future incidents and better monitor what lies beneath the surface. Joining me to talk all about this is Don Brown. He is the Deputy Public Works Commissioner of Macomb County. Don, thank you so much for being here.

Don: Hey, great to be here. Thank you.

Dara: What was it that gave you the push to go into this technology?

Don: Well, we have to be proactive. We've got aging infrastructure underground. People don't see it, so it's out of sight, out of mind often. And it hadn't been maintained previously before the commissioner took office. So getting that technology involved to find a way to efficiently go through and better monitor the — and inspect the sewers underground was key.

Dara: Can you explain how this technology works?

Don: The technology is simple. We put — It's not so simple actually. We fly a drone in sewers, and it's in a cage. So we fly it in a cage and it scans the circumference of the drain. And that feeds that information to our engineers above ground in real time to their laptops that they're looking at. And it helps them analyze where the structure is. Is it sound in the spot or has it got cracks, any damage? Those are our problems. And so that's really been — it helps saves technology and helps us save time because instead of walking through a sewer with a man that, you know, covered up or running through a track vehicle, it saves so much time and money doing it that way. So we can really inspect a lot of the infrastructure more efficiently doing a drone.

Dara: And can you tell me about the benefits of actually using this in motion? How does that work?

Don: Well, the benefits are that, for one thing, it doesn't put people in a sewer. And it also helps to save money because it saves us time because we can inspect miles of infrastructure efficiently and more quickly than we could through other slow, you know, outmoded technology.

Dara: And tell me about the technology itself when it works to fix the pipes. How does that work?

Don: Well, by feeding the information to our engineers, they can better inspect in real time. They take photos is really what it is. It's high-resolution photos of the sewers, and they look and they can see exactly what's going on. And they can, you know, determine what the best solution is to repair it. Maybe it doesn't need repairs, but many times they're very old and they have cracks in the system. And, you know, that sinkhole in 2016 was a result of a bad pipe, a decaying pipe. Had we known about it, we could have addressed it earlier. But there was no maintenance going on before the Public Works commissioner took over in 2016. So now we're being aggressive about going out, being proactive, doing an asset inventory of all of our sewer lines, as well as our stormwater systems throughout our entire county. And we're not all the way there yet, but having this drone technology helps us get through those lines a lot more quickly and more efficiently.

Dara: Tell me about the actual maintenance of the pipes. How are you using the technology to fix them?

Don: What's really good, if you have an old pipe and it's got issues, you don't have to dig it up and put a new pipe in. We've got a process. We put some what's called hobas, which is like a hose. It wraps inside the sewer and interlocking. And that gives us another 100 years of life in the sewer. It's really, really remarkable. And we've used it quite a bit in the pipes that we found that need repairs, and it saves so much money because you can imagine the inconvenience and the money it would cost to dig these sewer lines up, put brand-new sewers in the ground. We just can't do that. But we've got a process now that our engineers use to do that, and it's really revolutionary. It's saving the taxpayers millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars.

Dara: And you talk about this being revolutionary.

Don: Yes.

Dara: You are the first in Macomb County to use this technology.

Don: Yeah, we're the first in our state and certainly probably the country or one of the few in the country using this technology. That's why we were awarded the NACo Achievement Award for our technology. You know, people submit those applications from across the country. And we were selected to be — you know, receive this award because of the revolutionary technology we're using, because it's going to be — it's going to save people regardless of whether you're in Michigan or in California or Arizona. Anywhere you get underground infrastructure, this A.I. technology — using drones to help you — is really revolutionary and it's really going to save them money as well.

Dara: Don Brown, Deputy Public Works Commissioner of Macomb County, thank you so much for your time.

Don: You're welcome. Thank you.

Dara: And thank you as well for watching. For more conversations about digital opportunity and broadband expansion, visit gettingconnected.com. I'm Dara Brown.