Wastewater infrastructures including collection pipes and treatment facilities represent enormous investments in physical assets. The replacement value of these assets amounts to millions of euros for every major city but also small municipalities. During the last 30 years, most municipalities have invested in sewer system expansion to meet growth and treatment plant upgrade but a relatively small proportion of the budget has been allocated to sewer rehabilitation. As a result, most cities face an aging infrastructure in extensive and emerging need of repair, rehabilitation or renewal.

RELIABLE SEWER aims to develop a panel of prototypes to support municipalities in the definition of sewer inspection and rehabilitation strategies. It will allow utilities to tackle sewer aging and network deterioration and to optimise the use of financial resources. In particular, the tools will help utilities to choose where and when to inspect sewers and to estimate the necessary investment need to cope with sewer system deterioration.

RELIABLE SEWER will also improve the reliability of current sewer deterioration modelling approaches. It includes the consideration of repair and renovation measures in investment simulations, the estimation of uncertainties in budget forecasts and the optimisation of asset management scenarios in order to identify the most appropriate balance between replacement, renovation and repair measures.
Finally, RELIABLE SEWER will demonstrate the benefits and potential costs savings obtained from the use of deterioration modelling on three case studies located in Germany, in Bulgaria and in the USA.