The CARE-S project objective was 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 should 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 the upstart of CARE-S some analytical tools to assess the technical or functional state of sewers or the needs for rehabilitation had been developed or were under development in several European Research Centres and Universities. Usually, though they did not take into account all aspects of rehabilitation decisions and had only been applied for a limited number of wastewater services. They needed to be tested, validated and aggregated and they needed to be linked to those performance indicators (PI), that are the key criteria for rehabilitation decisions. The specific objectives of the project were to improve these tools, link them and to make them usable for the formulation of a rehabilitation strategy.
The CARE-S resulted in a product for decision support 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 choosing the right rehabilitation technology
a procedure for defining the best planning strategy for rehabilitation investments
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 data.
CARE-S comprises a "Sewer Rehab Manager" prototype and a handbook. The deliverables are available on CD-ROM and (partially) on paper.
Published January 14, 2008
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