Minimizing risks in the development of prospective water supply and wastewater discharge schemes

Abstract

Water supply and wastewater discharge systems constitute capital-intensive, energy-consuming, and complex facilities that are characterized by significant inertia and are, therefore, difficult to adapt to constantly changing operating conditions. The past 20 years have seen a decrease in specific water consumption by almost half. Infill development and the fact that new projects are not designed for the existing utility lines caused an overload in many parts of water supply and wastewater discharge systems, while others became virtually non-functioning. All these factors led to increased failure rates, significant maintenance costs, inadequate hydraulic conditions, and deterioration of drinking water quality, as well as clogs and blockages in sewers. An example is group water supply systems, whose construction was very popular in the era of “developed socialism” and the post-perestroika period. Nowadays, many of them continue to operate, with no one to supply water to, as many settlements have simply ceased to exist due to migration processes. The current situation can be attributed to planning and design errors or, more precisely, the neglect of factors that exist now and will probably arise in the future. Design is known to be a process of creating an object that is yet to be realized. The object needs to be designed so that it functions in the future, and the future is not defined and has no deterministic parameters and values (the basic contradiction of design). The article proposes one of the possible approaches to resolving this contradiction; it is based on studying the zone of uncertainty and identifying minimum economic risk options.