Project objectives:
The project objective is to establish a rational framework for sewer network rehabilitation decision-making. CARE-S aims to analyse the structural and functional
reliability of wastewater networks at minimum cost and disturbance. The ultimate product will be a Decision Support System (DSS) that will enable municipal
engineers to establish and maintain effective management of their sewer networks.
In other words: Rehabilitate the right sewer at the right time by using the right rehabilitation technique at a minimum total cost, and before serious failures
occur (pro-active approach). Up to now some analytical tools to assess the technical or functional state of sewers or the needs for rehabilitation have been
developed or are under development in several European Research Centres and Universities. Usually, though they do not take into account all aspects of rehabilitation
decisions and have only been applied for a limited number of wastewater services. They need to be tested, validated and aggregated and they need to be linked
to those performance indicators (PI), that are the key criteria for rehabilitation decisions. The specific objectives of the project are to improve these
tools, link them and to make them usable for the formulation of a rehabilitation strategy.
The final product of the project will be a Decision Support System for sewer network rehabilitation, including:
* a control panel of Performance Indicators (PI) relevant for rehabilitation decisions,
* analytical and statistical tools to assess and forecast some of the PIs
* a procedure to define the socio-economic and environmental risks of malfunctioning sewer systems
* a procedure for choosinge the right rehabilitation technology,
* a procedure for defininge the best planning strategy for rehabilitation investments, and
* a software package, called 'Sewer Rehab Manager' that will enable consultants and wastewater service providers to use the above products according to
their individual needs and available.
The major products of the project will be the 'Sewer Rehab Manager' prototype and a handbook. The final version of the prototype, completely ready to be used
and to be commercialised, will be produced in the 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-S and to initiate
the commercialisation of the product.
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Project
Summary:
his project deals with public sewer and storm water networks of any dimension. It includes problems caused by ageing, structural failures, inflow/infiltration,
exfiltration (leaking) and insufficient capacity which can cause floods, pollution of receiving waters, pollution of ground water and soil, treatment plant
impacts and increasing maintenance costs.
The ultimate project goal is to develop a suite of tools, which provides the most cost-efficient system of maintenance, repair and rehabilitation of sewer
networks, with the aim to guarantee security of sanitary sewage collection and storm water drainage in order to meet social, health, economic and environmental
requirements. This will be done within the context of integrated catchment management and the strategic objective of ensuring security of water resources.
Sewer and storm water systems in European cities suffer from insufficient capacity, construction flaws and pipe deterioration. The consequences are structural
failures, local floods (a particular problem being basement flooding), traffic disturbance, street and surface erosion, and pollution of local receiving
waters. The problems arise because of the combination of ageing infrastructure and increased urbanisation. Urbanisation affects the balance between surface
runoff and groundwater level, and leads to an increase of both, runoff volume and intensity. Additionally, the frequency of high intensity rainfall appears
to be increasinge in many regions and climatologists predict climate changes that will increase the problem further. European cities spend in the order of
five billion Euro per year for wastewater network rehabilitation. This amount is expected to increase significantly over the coming decades, due to network
ageing. Out of the EU allocation for the Regional fund, typically 20% may be spent on water and wastewater systems of which wastewater networks cause larger
costs than water distribution systems.
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Dr Stefan Gödeke