The thematic scope frames the key issues and discussion points related to the 2010 theme "The Water Quality Challenge - Prevention, Wise Use and Abatement". The intention is to deepen the understanding of, stimulate ideas on, and engage the water community around the challenges related to water quality.

The strategic thinking nature of the conference makes it an important source of know-how in the integrated perspective favoured by the AWARE-P approach.

For more information, go to http://www.worldwaterweek.org/

The extended R&D project team discussed several of the scientific and technical options behind the designs currently under implementation, and several other proposals for future developments under the AWARE-P open source platform were presented.

Part of the R&D team at the AWARE-P workroom in LNEC. Left to right: Kjersti Holte, Maria Almeida, Helena Alegre, Adriana Cardoso, Sigurd Hafskjold, Ingrid Selseth, Sergio T Coelho, João Paulo Leitão, Tiago Henrique, Maria S. Silva, Rita Ugarelli, Nelson Carriço.

The deadline for submitting abstracts to the 2010 edition of the ENaSB/SILUBESA meeting, which is going to be held this fall in Porto (October 12th to 15th), has been extended to April 23rd. The official website for the meeting has also been launched at www.14enasbsilubesa.org.

2010 Asia Pacific Water and Sewer Systems Modelling Conference
21 & 22 April 2010, Gold Coast, Australia

38th Annual BCWWA Annual Conference & Trade Show
1-5 May, Whistler, BC ,Canada

Utilities Asset Management 2010 - Risk management strategies and techniques to ensure you
meet your targets in the current economic climate
24-26 May 2010, London, UK

Asset Standards - Fit for Purpose?
9 June 2010, Newcastle, UK

Singapore International Water Week
28 June-2 July 2010, Singapore 
Keynote speech: Management of Water Assets for Maximum Operational Efficiency, R. Renner (USA)

WDSA 2010 - 12th annual Water Distribution Systems Analysis conference
12-15 September 2010, Tucson (Arizona), USA

IWA World Water Congress
19-24 September 2010, Montreal, Canada

International Advanced Asset Management Forum 2010
15 - 16th November 2010, Wellington, New Zealand

IWRM Karlsruhe - Integrated Water Resources Management
24-25 November 2010, Karlsruhe, Germany

The International Water Association's Specialist Group on Strategic Asset Management addresses all aspects of strategic asset management, with a view to tackling the key elements of the asset management process and developing robust methodologies and tools to assist in the delivery of effective and efficient service.

The group conference: 3rd Leading-Edge conference on Strategic Asset Management (LESAM) was held in Miami (USA), 11-13 November, 2009. The conference covered a broad range of topics related to SAM and was strongly attended. It is encouraging to see the growth of this conference and that many of the ideas presented at the first conference held in San Francisco in 2004 are now becoming main stream. The copies of presentations from the conference can be found on the Group’s web page, under “previous conferences and reports”.

During the Group's meeting at LESAM, reports were given on recent activities including standardisation, participation in Water Science and Technology and WAMI, group newsletter, development of the SAM SG Website, Conference SAM of small and medium wastewater utilities held in Greece and the WWC 2008 – Workshop on SAM. Ideas for new Task Groups were discussed and proposed on the topics of:

• Standardization (Helena Alegre)
• Economics in AM (David Marlow)
• Asset management communication (Scott Haskins, Franz Schulting, Will Williams, Stewart Burn, Jeff Oxenford)
• Information exchange
• Research clearing house
• Wiki page
• "Who's who" in AM
• Success / failure stories /story boards
• European Framework Initiatives (Stewart Burn & Franz Schulting)
• Guidance for IAM data collection and management (Annie Vanrenterghem-Raven)
• Management and leadership (Bill Gilmore)

If you wish to be involved in any of these please contact Stewart at stewart.Burn@csiro. au, and he will happily put you in touch with the coordinators of each task group. 

The next LESAM will be held in Mulheim in Germany in 2011 and will be jointly organised with IWW Water Centre (water supply) and FiW (wastewater). Members are encouraged to think about presentation themes. We would really like to encourage new ideas in the areas of carbon trading, energy utilisation and water sensitive cities. The venue for LESAM in 2013 will be discussed at the IWA World Water Congress to be held in Montreal in 2010. Members located in countries outside Europe and the USA are strongly encouraged to consider hosting LESAM 2013. Interested members should contact Helena Alegre (halegre@lnec.pt).

Due to recent changes in activities associated with some committee members some new additions to the committee were made. The committee's current roster is:

Chair: Helena Alegre
Vice-Chair: John Bridgeman
Secretary, newsletter editor and web master moderator: Stewart Burn
Committee members are: Scott Haskins, Will Willams, David Marlow, Johannes Buckle, Joy K Desai, Purushottam Patil, Suwan Park
Young professionals’ representative: Dídia Covas.

(from IWA Member Newsletter, Issue 39/December 2009)

Two new team members have joined the Aware-P R&D team at LNEC in Lisbon. Kjersti Holte is a Master's student from NTNU (Trondheim, Norway) who will be contributing to the Aware data modelling effort through a dissertation centered on comparing various urban water data systems from the viewpoint of strategic asset management applications. During this first experience, Kjersti will stay with the project until June 2010.

João Paulo Leitão is a postdoctoral Research Associate at LNEC who has joined the Aware-P R&D team that explores risk assessment methodologies. He will be exploring and developing methods to assess component importance and risk event consequences in both water supply and wastewater networks, making use of network modelling and GIS analysis tools.

In the framework of the AWARE-P Project, the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) is opening a call for one post-doctoral scholarship, granted under the condition s stated by the Research Grant Holder Statute (Lei n.º 40/2004, from 18th August) and in  accordance with the Regulations for Advanced Training and Qualification of Human Resources of the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia). The scholarship is funded by the EEA Grants and has the duration of 6 months , renewable up to one year. The call is open from 11th to 20th of January 2010. For further information visit http://www.lnec.pt/recrutamento or contact us by email.

A Portuguese meeting of water & wastewater engineers (ENaSB) and a Portuguese-Brazilian symposium of environmental and sanitary engineering (SILUBESA) will be organized in the city of Porto next fall, from October 12th to 15th. The organization is a partnership between the Portuguese association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (APESB), the Portuguese Water Resources Association (APRH) and the Brazilian Association of Sanitary Engineering (ABES). It is going to be held in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP).

There are two main themes which are going to be discussed during this event: water and wastewater plans in the Portuguese speaking countries community, and the Management of problems related with biodegradable urban waste.

The call for abstracts has begun, and ends on the 31st of March 2010. For further information just visit the APESB association website at http://apesb.org/.

The past month, on the days 11th to 13th of November 2009, the 3rd Leading-Edge Conference on Strategic Asset Management was held in the city of Miami, Florida.

One of AWARE-P project collaborators, Dr. Eng. Helena Alegre, was part of the Scientific and Program Committee Chair. Beside this she also made a presentation on a session entitled:  “A Rehabilitation Planning Handbook for Water Supply Infrastructures”. She also moderated two different sessions, one called “Approaches to Asset Management”, and the other “Enabling Asset Management”.

 As it is known asset management is one of the key elements of AWARE-P project. On this topic take a look at Helena Alegre’s powerpoint presentation in the dissemination section.

The following year the University of Arizona and the Technion are going to have the 12th annual Water Distribution Systems Analysis conference. It is going to be held in September 12-15, 2010 in Tucson, Arizona.

One of the themes which are going to be discussed during this event is the Asset Management and System Rehabilitaton. Since this theme is related to AWARE-P project it is of our interest to see what will be discussed.

The call for abstracts has begun, and its deadline is on February 1st 2010. For further knowledge visit the official website: http://www.wdsa2010.org/.

The first AWARE-P workshop will be held on the 29th September 2009 in LNEC involving the partners and the end users. The morning session will focus on the presentation of the software implementation developed until that date. The afternoon session will include an exercise with the end users expectation concerning the sofware interface and framework.

The AWARE-P team was invited to participate in the "Final Seminar of the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism 2004 - 2009" held on 7th September 2009 in Main Auditorium of the Rectorate building of the New University of Lisbon (UNL – Universidade Nova de Lisboa) at 14:30.

A three day meeting was held at LNEC between the 21st and the 23rd of July, 2009. The first day meeting included the partners and the end-users and two special participants - Annie Vanrenterghem-Raven (from Polytechnic Institute of NYU) and Rita Ugarelli (from SINTEF) - and aimed at the dissimination of the main lessons learnt in the previous projects and experience on CARE-S, namely "AM projects run in the US: lessons learned", "The software MWH capplan", "The application of CARE-S to Reggio Emilia", "AM study in OSLO" and "SINTEF experience with CARE". The last two days were limited to partners and used to discuss the framework of the software.