COST-S: a new methodology and tools for sewerage asset management based on whole life costs

This is the final version of the article. Freely available from IWA Publishing via the link in this record.This paper discusses the development of a methodology and software tools aimed at assisting management decisions in order to provide acceptable performance at a minimum cost over the whole life of the sewerage system. Whole Life Costing (WLC) approaches have been shown to offer an ideal platform to provide investment and operational management tools that take account of the timing of interventions, system behaviour and performance all within a sensible economic and engineering framework. The need for such a methodology and the requirements for its useful implementation are introduced first. The paper then describes how research collaboration between the UK Water Industry and two UK research centres (Centre for Water Systems at Exeter University and Pennine Water Group at Universities of Sheffield and Bradford), and supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant, resulted in an innovative, practical and auditable methodology with associated tools for better proactive management of ageing and rapidly deteriorating sewerage systems.The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of EPSRC (Project No.GR/M16122/01 and GR/R98617/01) as well as that of the industrial collaborators;AWG, Northumbrian Water,Thames Water Services,United Utilities and Yorkshire Water Services