Integrated rehabilitation planning of urban infrastructure systems using a street section priority model.

Due to the changes in water management, from the construction of new systems to the rehabilitation of existing networks, integrated strategic rehabilitation management has become more and more important. Consequently, this paper shows a method that considers sewer and water distribution networks against environmental factors (e.g. street network and connected buildings) in a priority model. This approach aids in not only identifying areas where rehabilitation is technically necessary but also economically recommendable (e.g. completely depreciated). This is achieved by implementing factors of structural resiliency, vulnerability of the network, capital value and other network components (e.g. manholes, house connections). This model is applied to a medium sized case study in which the rehabilitation areas identified by the developed model are compared to the actual rehabilitation plans of the water and sewage companies. Results also show the application of the estimated ranking for rehabilitation planning with a fixed budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]