An optimal asset renewal decision support model

Asset management plays a significant role in modern industries, particularly in water utilities, in providing available and reliable service at an optimised asset Life Cycle Cost (LCC). Asset owners require an optimal life cycle decision support model for the longer-term asset strategy, planning and budgeting. There are numerous asset life models to predict physical, economic, and technological aspect of asset life, individually; however, there is currently no such model that combines all aspects. The aim of this project is to develop asset life cycle decision support model explicitly joint three aspects of asset lives and their determinants (i.e. physical age and degradation, operating, maintenance costs and technology changes). To this purpose, multi-objective optimisation method and stochastic dynamic programming would be applied to model an optimised asset renewal decision support. This model is expected to determine an optimal asset renewal and replacement decision support model at the lowest LCC in water industry, providing a stable and reliable service and having an optimised investment plan.

Thesis underway.