**1. Introduction**

Urban water systems are the most valuable part of the public infrastructure worldwide, and utilities and municipalities are entrusted with the responsibility of managing and expanding them for current and future generations. Infrastructures inexorably age and degrade, while society places increasing demands for levels of service, risk management and sustainability.

As many systems reach high levels of deferred maintenance and rehabilitation (ASCE, 2009), the combined replacement value of such infrastructures is overwhelming, demanding judi‐ cious spending and efficient planning.

Infrastructure asset management (IAM) of urban water infrastructures is the set of processes that utilities need to have in place in order to ensure that infrastructure performance corre‐ sponds to service targets over time, that risks are adequately managed, and that the corre‐ sponding costs, in a lifetime cost perspective, are as low as possible.

IAM methods partially differ from those applicable to managing other types of assets. One of the reasons is the fact that such infrastructures have indefinite lives, in order to satisfy the permanent needs of a specific public service. Infrastructures are not replaceable as a whole, only piecemeal. Consequently, in a mature infrastructure, all phases of assets lifetime coex‐ ist. Additionally, in network-based infrastructures, it is frequently not feasible to allocate levels of service to individual components because there is a dominant system behavior (e.g. symptoms and their causes often occur at different locations).

IAM is increasingly becoming a key topic in the move towards compliance with perform‐ ance requirements in water supply and wastewater systems. Sustainable management of these systems should respond to the need for:

© 2013 Alegre and Coelho; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**•** Promoting adequate levels of service and strengthening long-term service reliability;

among the most researched topics (e.g., Sægrov ed., 2005; Sægrov ed., 2006; Malm *et al*., 2012; Renaud *et al*., 2011). From 2005, the biannual LESAM (Leading-Edge Strategic Asset Manage‐ ment) conferences of the International Water Association have clearly demonstrated the in‐ creasing interest and recognition of this field of knowledge (e.g. Alegre and Almeida ed., 2009). Effective decision-making requires a comprehensive approach that ensures the desired per‐ formance at an acceptable risk level, taking into consideration the costs of building, operat‐ ing, maintaining and disposing capital assets over their life cycles. Brown and Humphrey (2005) summarize these concepts by defining IAM as "the art of balancing performance, cost

Infrastructure Asset Management of Urban Water Systems

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/52377

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IAM is most often approached based on partial views: e.g., for business managers and account‐ ants, IAM means financial planning and the control of business risk exposure (Harlow and Young, 2001); for water engineers, IAM is focused on network analysis and design, master planning, construction, optimal operation and hydraulic reliability (Alegre and Almeida ed., 2009); for asset maintenance managers, the infrastructure is mostly an inventory of individual assets and IAM tends to be the sum of asset-by-asset plans, established based on condition and criticality assessment; for many elected officials, since water infrastructures are mostly buried, low visibility assets, IAM tends to be driven by service coverage, quality and affordability in the short run. Common misconceptions include reducing IAM to a one-size-fits-all set of prin‐ ciples and solutions, mistaking it for a piece of software, substituting it for engineering technol‐ ogy, or believing that it can be altogether outsourced. In practical terms, many existing

To avoid the shortcomings inherent to these partial views, integrated IAM approaches are required, driven by the need to provide adequate levels of service and a sustainable service

Integrated IAM may be implemented in many different forms. Even for a specific utility and a given external context, different approaches may be successfully implemented. However, there are some basic principles commonly accepted in the current leading literature, practice and standardization (Hughes, 2002; INGENIUM and IPWEA, 2011; Sægrov ed., 2005; Sæ‐

An integrated methodology is presented that approaches IAM as a management process, based on PDCA principles and requiring full alignment between the strategic objectives and targets, and the actual priorities and actions implemented, embedding the key requirements of the forthcoming ISO 55000/55001/55002 standards on asset management (ISO, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). The approach expressly takes into account that a networked infrastructure cannot be dealt with in the same way as other collections of physical assets: it has a domi‐ nant system behavior (i.e., individual assets are not independent from one another), and as a whole it does not have a finite life – it cannot be replaced in its entirety, only piecemeal (Burns *et al*., 1999). The methodology allows for the assessment and comparison of interven‐

implementations tend to be biased by one or several of these perspectives.

and risk in the long-term".

**3. IAM as an integrated approach**

in the long-term.

grov ed., 2006; Sneesby, 2010).

