Wastewater Utility Resilience Assessment

In January 2010, the American Society of Civil Engineers conducted a series of workshops to address problems with infrastructure deficiencies in the United States. The outcomes associated with these workshops were discussed in Civil Engineering Magazine (April 2010). Based upon these outcomes, a consensus was reached that the water and wastewater infrastructure in the United States is in a state of crisis and that the following recommendations may provide a roadmap to ease that crisis and a vision for improvement:Increase Federal Leadership in Infrastructure;Promote Sustainability and Resilience;Develop Federal, Regional and State Infrastructure Plans;Address Life-Cycle Costs and Ongoing Maintenance; andIncrease and Improve Investment from all Stakeholders.Based upon the above information, engineers must be able to define and calculate resilience for wastewater collection and treatment systems and then incorporate these concepts and measures into a risk assessment and preparedness model.This paper and presentation will perform resilience calculations for a 10 MGD wastewater reuse plant located in the United States and discuss the implications of these calculations for utility design and operation.