Assessment of the quality of service provided to users by the water utilities in Portugal: revision of the infrastructure asset knowledge and management index

Abstract

The Portuguese water and waste services regulation authority (ERSAR) promotes the annual assessment of the quality of service provided to users, which is based on a set of metrics, namely performance indicators and indices. One of the metrics that has been used since 2011 is the infrastructure asset knowledge and management index. Despite its undeniable worth, this index contains some simplifications that must be improved. Therefore, ERSAR and the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) have revised the index in order to detail the information that water utilities must provide to fulfil all the requirements needed to implement and maintain an infrastructure asset management (IAM) system. This paper aims to present the revised index as an example of a metric that can be used by other regulation authorities or water utilities regarding the assessment of infrastructure asset knowledge, asset management and flow measuring.