Towards a better urban water infrastructure asset management by condition assessment and cost modelling

Abstract

Infrastructure asset management (IAM) has been increasingly becoming a key topic in the mind-set shift of the water sector managers and policy makers, allowing to assist in the operational, tactical and strategic decision-making in urban water infrastructures. Nevertheless, IAM implementation by the water utilities is still far from needed and not widespread, due to several challenges and constraints, mainly associated with limited human, technological and financial resources. The current research aims at enhancing urban water infrastructure asset management through an integrated decision-making approach, that includes novel methodologies for condition assessment, service life prediction and cost modelling. This approach can be applied at three assessment levels – macro, meso and micro – allowing the identification of intervention priority assets and the study of different long-term rehabilitation solutions, when applied at the meso and macro level, and the diagnosis, prioritization and study of different intervention solutions at the micro assessment level.