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The requirement to provide urban water services continuously while infrastructures are ageing, imposes the need for increasingly sustainable infrastructure asset management (IAM). To achieve and maintain adequate levels of service, the AWARE-P IAM methodology has been applied in collaborative projects launched by the National Civil Engineering Laboratory, in partnership with IST (Technical University of Lisbon), Addition (software company) and several water utilities. The objective of these projects is to support urban water utilities in the development, implementation and maintenance of IAM plans. To guarantee the success of IAM planning, following the AWARE-P IAM methodology, utilities are required to: consider that the infrastructure has system behaviour and lifespan is indefinite and guarantee the full-alignment of IAM planning with organisation objectives. By analysing the strategic and tactical plans of participating utilities, the proposed methodology principles are discussed and supported. The main innovation results from the implementation of IAM planning are also presented and discussed, including the challenges of setting up an IAM process, together with the major benefits and drawbacks that come up when developing IAM plans. The results were demonstrated by the effective implementation of 16 strategic and 14 tactical IAM plans by the participating utilities.

A key worldwide challenge in most sectors is to boost the effective adoption of innovation, as underpinned by the new European Union research programme Horizon 2020, which focuses on increasing innovation in Europe from 2014 to 2020. This is particularly relevant in the water sector, often perceived as conservative and averse to change. This paper discusses the role that collaborative knowledge-transfer projects can play in effectively rolling out R&D in the water industry. LNEC (Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil) has designed a structured model based on a phased programme and a network of utilities and researchers. The paper presents the core principles, the rationale, the model and methods used, and the theoretical background, as well as the project's impact, outcomes and products. The discussion highlights the lessons learnt and provides a formal analysis of the advantages of focusing on middle management as an effective entry point, even if innovation is needed across the organization. Making training materials, guidelines, use cases, data and software publicly available after the project's end has proven to have a decisive multiplying effect. The paper also argues in favour of the collaborative model as a basis for R&D sustainability, and details on-going and planned developments.

Water services are a strategic sector of large social and economic relevance. It is therefore essential that they are managed rationally and efficiently. Advanced water supply and wastewater infrastructure asset management (IAM) is key in achieving adequate levels of service in the future, particularly with regard to reliable and high quality drinking water supply, prevention of urban flooding, efficient use of natural resources and prevention of pollution. This paper presents a methodology for supporting the development of urban water IAM, developed during the AWARE-P project as well as an appraisal of its implementation in four water utilities. Both water supply and wastewater systems were considered. Due to the different contexts and features of the utilities, the main concerns vary from case to case; some problems essentially are related to performance, others to risk. Cost is a common deciding factor. The paper describes the procedure applied, focusing on the diversity of drivers, constraints, benefits and outcomes. It also points out the main challenges and the results obtained through the implementation of a structured procedure for supporting urban water IAM.