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.

Urban areas are dynamic, facing evolving hazards, having interacting strategic services and assets. Their management involves multiple stakeholders bringing additional complexity. Potential impacts of climate dynamics may aggravate current conditions and the appearance of new hazards. These challenges require an integrated and forward-looking approach to resilient and sustainable urban development, being essential to identify the real needs for its achievement. Several frameworks for assessing resilience have been developed in different fields. However, considering the focus on climate change and urban services, specific needs were identified, particularly in assessing strategic urban sectors and their interactions with others and with the wider urban system. A resilience assessment framework was developed directing and facilitating an objective-driven resilience diagnosis of urban cities and services. This supports the decision on selection of resilience measures and the development of strategies to enhance resilience, outlining a path to co-build resilience action plans, and to track resilience progress in the city or service over time. This paper presents the framework and the main results of its application to three cities having diverse contexts. It was demonstrated that the framework highlights where cities and urban services stand, regarding resilience to climate change, and identifies the most critical aspects to improve, including expected future impacts.

Flood risk management in urban areas adjacent to the coast is essential to increase their resilience. This study aims at improving scientific knowledge of flood risk alongside estuaries, considering different hazards and integrating estuarine and urban drainage modelling. Mathematical modelling of stormwater systems is a useful tool to evaluate the susceptibility to flooding and identify potential measures to reduce flood risk. The assessment of urban drainage flooding uses a coupled 1D/2D model, applying 1D model to the underground system and 2D model for the surface component. Assessment scenarios were based on variables rainfall, estuarine water level, and degree of obstruction in sewers and at system outfalls. Estuarine hydrodynamics were simulated using the SCHISM‐WWM model. A web GIS platform was developed to support urban flood risk forecast and management providing urban analysis visualisation. The main objective is to forecast flooding in the Dafundo catchment supporting definition of population warnings. This paper proposes a flood risk assessment approach, using 1D/2D coupled modelling, estuarine hydrodynamics, integrating the assessment in a forecast web platform. The novelty is supporting an integrated flood risk management in stormwater systems, particularly in estuarine areas, providing an important improvement to assess flooding occurrence, regarding flood depth, area and duration.

The RESCCUE Project is an H2020 research project that aims to help cities around the world to become more resilient to physical, social, and economic challenges, using the water sector as the central point of the approach. RESCCUE will generate models and tools to bring this objective to practice, while delivering a framework enabling city resilience assessment, planning and management. This will be achieved by integrating software tools, methods, and new knowledge related to the detailed urban services performance into novel and promising loosely coupled models (integrated models), multi-risk assessment method, and a comprehensive resilience platform. These tools will allow urban resilience assessment from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate change scenarios, including multiple hazards and cascading effects. The RESCCUE approach will be implemented in three EU cities (Barcelona, Bristol, and Lisbon) and, with the support of UN-Habitat, disseminate their results among other cities belonging to major international networks. The aim of this paper is to present the main goals of this project, as well as the approach followed and the main expected results after the four years of implementation, so other cities around the world can use the RESCCUE approach to increase their resilience.

This paper addresses the issue of performance assessment in water and wastewater systems by reviewing two of the tools that are available to the companies operating in this field: systems of performance indicators and technical performance assessment through simulation. The paper focuses on a technical performance evaluation framework and its application to wastewater systems. The assessment is carried out through the application of utility functions to the network's elements, and the production of performance-oriented graphs that yield concise and informative views about the system's behaviour. Two case studies involving a combined sewer system and a separate domestic system are presented in order to illustrate the method.

The aim of this paper is to present current work to develop a system of performance indicators (PI) for wastewater services undertaken under the auspices of IWA and coordinated by LNEC. Present day wastewater utilities manage their services and systems in an increasingly demanding and complex way. For this reason, it is important to support their work and decision processes with the best available tools in order to deliver services with the most effective and efficient performance. The paper focuses on proposed performance indicators (PIs) for wastewater services and on the main aspects of PI assessment. These are based on data related to: environmental, operational, personnel, physical, quality of service and economic and financial performance. Data are mostly made available through the various common-use information systems in the utilities. This IWA forum has been important not only for the dissemination of the work already developed but also as promotion of a wider discussion to enhance the final draft version of the IWA Manual of Best Practice due for publication in 2003.