When I came across an article on how some organizations are pursuing ISO 55000 for the sake of getting the prestige and using it for marketing purposes, my thought was these organizations are missing a lot. I can see two significant values you are investing on with ISO 55000: You are adding …
Asset Management Perspective on the August 2017 Unsafe Drinking Water Report USA
News21’s investigative report that around 63 million Americans are exposed to unsafe drinking water is making headlines in the USA’s major online news agencies. The report examined the Environmental Protection Agency violations on water quality and monitoring affecting places from California to …
Water Utility Planning – Is Deep Uncertainty Analysis A Better Option?
A new scientific society, the Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty, is arguing that water managers need to use a different system of analysis for planning ahead. The Society thinks that uncertainty in this time of rapid environmental and social change implies that managers need to …
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California Legislation Recognizes Watersheds as Critical Infrastructure
It is no secret that the US State of California has spent the last hundred years creating a vast system and network of pipes, pump stations, and aqueducts that reach far and wide into distant regions in order to filter water from remote rivers into hard to reach dry zones in the Southern part of the …
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Canadian Study on Stormwater Infrastructure – Infrastructure Management
Recently the Sustainable Prosperity, an environmental think tank based at the University of Ottowa, conducted a study, aptly labeled "New Solutions for Sustainable Stormwater Management in Canada." The study reviews the current state of stormwater management in Canada and the two most regularly …
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The ASCE 2017 Wastewater Infrastructure Report and Asset Management Planning
Wastewater and Stormwater infrastructure in the 2017 ASCE report Card received a D+. This is up from the 2013 report card grade of D. This is in part due to the fact there has been some innovation with the treatment plants to ensure protection against flooding and cross-contamination and new more …
Infrastructure Asset Management Impacts of the Electronic Vehicle Disruption
Tony Seba has published an updated lecture: The Electric Vehicle Disruption - End of Oil 2030 Having attended a lecture by Tony Seba two years ago, I have found his analysis coherent, well-researched, and well worth taking note of. If you are involved in transportation infrastructure …
ASCE 2017 Infrastructure Report Card and Asset Management Planning
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases a report on the state of the USA’s general infrastructure both on a Federal and State level every few years, with the previous report being issued in 2013. The ASCE conducts this detailed report in sixteen major target areas of …
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Singapore’s Answer to Wastewater Management – Effective Infrastructure Management
Engineers in the tiny island nation of Singapore have been constructing a state of the art new sewer system, know as the DTSS (Deep Tunnel Sewer System). Phase one of the project was completed in 2008 and phase two began in 2013. It is a cost-effective and sustainable solution, offered by the …
21st Century Approach to Water Utility Resilience
For those investing in water infrastructure and water solutions, there is a concept that must be grasped: water will always win against human control. It is possible to think outside the box and not trying to stop or change the naturally occurring patterns in waterways or geographically wet …
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Infrastructure Asset Management Challenge – Sanitation Failures and Hookworm Infections in Rural Alabama
In Lowndes County, Alabama, many septic systems are old, leaking, or have failed completely. Problems thought to have been solved at the turn of the 20th century have again surfaced, mostly in the form of hookworm infecting many children living in these rural communities. Often this is so …
New Investment Center Initiative to Aid Water Systems and Development in Western USA
The U.S. Department of the Interior launched a new center in December 2015 to encourage water infrastructure investment in the dry West of the United States. The Natural Resource Investment Center (NRIC) has been set up in the hopes that new infrastructure will be developed and invested in as …