The objective is to estabilish a rational framework for water network rehabilitation decision-making. The ultimate product is a Decision Support System 
(DSS) that will enable municipal engineers to estabilish and maintain effective management of their water systems. In other words: Rehabilitate the right 
pipelines at the right time by using the right rehabilitation technique at a minimum total cost, before failure occurs (pro-active approach).      
     
Up to now some technical tools to assess the state of the pipes or the needs in rehabilitation have been developed or are under development in several European 
Research Centres and Universities. But they do not take into account all aspects of rehabilitation decisions, and have only been applied to a limited number 
of water services. They need to be tested and validated on more water services and to be aggregated and linked with those performance indicators that are the 
decision criteria of rehabilitation.      
     
The specific objectives of the project are to improve these tools and to make them usable in formulating a rehabilitation policy. The final product of the 
project will be a Decision Support System for rehabilitation including:      
     
     
a control panel of Performance Indicators (PI) for rehabilitation,      
a description of technical and statistical tools assessing and forecasting some of the PIs,      
a procedure to define the best choice for annual rehabilitation programming,      
a procedure to define the best strategy for planning rehabilitation investments (at long term: 10 to 20 years)      
a software, called 'prototype' in the following of the proposition, that will allow to use the above products with the data existing in the respective water 
utility.      
Major products of the program will be the prototype and a handbook. The final version of the prototype, completely ready to be used and to be commercialised, 
will be produced in 6 months after finishing the project. The deliverables will be available on CD-ROM and (partially) on paper.      
A final European conference and several national workshops will be held. The workshops are expected to boost the further development of CARE-W and to initialise 
the commercialisation of the product.      
     
The end-users of this product will be owners of water supply systems, operating companies and utilities, local authorities, financial institutions and 
national regulators.      
     
The project will contribute to objectives of the Key Action 'Sustainable Management and Quality of Water' by:      
     
     
addressing the problem of water networks at a European level;      
implementing EU water policies;      
improving quality of life, health and safety;      
improving employment and the use/level of skills;      
preserving and enhancing the environment as well as the use of natural resources;      
fostering economic development and S&T prospects.      
The project belongs to the CityNet cluster (The network of European research projects on integrated urban water management). Click here to get information 
about CityNet. 
            

The project developed a GIS user interface (CARE-W).CARE-W is a computer-based system for water network rehabilitation planning. It consists of software 
dealing with fundamental instruments for estimating the current and future condition of water networks, i.e. Performance Indicators, prediction of network 
failures and calculation of water supply reliability. Furthermore it includes routines for estimating long-term investment needs as well as selection and 
ranking of rehabilitation projects. These tools are integrated and are operated jointly in the CARE-W prototype, which also contains facilities for use including 
database, GIS and in- output routines. The results are presented by reports, in tables and by graphics/GIS.