Urban drainage asset management – now and future

Abstract

Urban drainage asset management gained momentum and importance in recent years because of economic considerations, low levels of services and evidence of the poor condition of many infrastructure components. Maintenance and rehabilitation activities are capital intensive and resources are limited. Physical urban water infrastructure has life expectancies of up to 100 years, while decisions taken in sewer asset management will have long-lasting impact on the functionality and quality of future services provided. These decisions can be supported by different approaches based on multiple sources of information, from various inspection techniques, deterioration models to assess the probability of failure, or technical service life, to sophisticated decision support systems crossing boundaries to other urban infrastructure. This abstract briefly presents sewer asset management in its manifold facets spanning a wide field of research and highlights existing research gaps while giving an outlook on future developments and research areas.