Water Infrastructure and Asset Management

Health, safety, and economic prosperity of the citizens of any country are ensured with services provided by core public infrastructures such as water, roads, transit, bridges, and wastewater. The water infrastructures are linear systems, among the most important and expensive municipal infrastructure assets. Maintaining integrity and reliability of water infrastructures is the primary goal of water utilities, governmental agencies, and other stakeholders. It has been quite challenging to maintain the integrity and reliability of water infrastructures because of the aging, aggressive environmental factors, climate change, improper maintenance and renewal, and resource shortages. In this article, the asset management framework for the water infrastructures has been discussed. The main objective of the asset management framework is to provide a desired level of service at a minimum cost. The asset management framework will provide the water utility with the capacity to make informed decisions based on the current and anticipated future performance of the asset. This framework will also help the water utility to improve strategic, tactical, and operational planning-level decisions considering different dimensions of analysis such as performance, risk, and cost analysis.