Decision Support System for Managing Underground Water Related Assets (Water Distribution and Sewerage)
In spite of recent increases in public infrastructure investments, municipal infrastructure is decaying faster than it is being renewed. Main components of public infrastructure include the water supply and wastewater systems. Both these systems have associated with them a large collection of underground pipes that constitute a substantial proportion of the cost of the system, and in some cases as much as half the overall cost of the system.
No matter how well these pipelines are designed, constructed and protected, once in place they deteriorate with age, due to environmental conditions, external damage, soil movements / instability etc. The deterioration of the assets affects the performance of the system and results in reduced levels of service to the customers. Hence one of the main challenges faced by water utilities around the world is how to manage these deteriorating assets. Over the years, water utilities have learnt from past experience that a pro-active approach to the management and rehabilitation of deteriorating assets is much more cost-effective than a reactive one.
A rehabilitation strategy needs to be in place to ensure that the pipe networks continue to operate efficiently and economically within defined operating requirements over an extended period. Attention is now moving away from reactionary strategies, which involve little long-term planning, towards proactive approaches based on predictive analyses to achieve longer -term economic efficiency. These predictive analyses must be based on a thorough understanding of how the various and numerous system descriptive parameters impact on the process of system deterioration and, in turn, on the different aspects of system performance. In addition, the need to optimize the economic efficiency of the rehabilitation strategy within operational requirements must be complemented by a sound understanding of the interactive economic impacts of system performance.
This work-package concerns the development of a decision support system for managing underground water related assets (water distribution and sewerage). A whole-life costing approach is proposed that takes into account the costs that accrue for water related assets in the provision, operation, maintenance, servicing and decommissioning of these assets over its useful life.
Although this work-package is concerned with underground water related assets, the problems mentioned above and the need for innovative rehabilitation strategies is common for other civil engineering urban infrastructure. Hence it is possible for the development of the decision support system to benefit from knowledge and practices from other infrastructure systems and vice versa. Hence an integral part of this work - package will be to identify best practices and processes from other infrastructure sectors and also to share best practice from the water sector with others.