Special collection on buried infrastructures

Health & safety and economic prosperity of citizens are ensured with services provided by core public infrastructure (CPI). The CPI are subject to increased demand for service, deleterious reactions and impact due to climate change that accelerate their aging and deterioration. Canada’s first National Infrastructure Report Card (2012), for example, showed the Water System, Storm Drainage System, and Wastewater System are in ‘fair’ to ‘very poor’ conditions. The replacement costs of these assets, respectively, are $25.9, $15.8, and $39 billion (in 2010 dollars). With increased aging and deterioration, limited resource and customer expectations for minimum acceptable level of service, managing the assets is challenging. To better understand how to deal with these complexities, this Special issue brought invited papers from the experts in the domain. This special collection focused on the buried infrastructure distribution systems (Potable water assets, and Storm water and Wastewater assets). The present special issue is comprised of invited papers from leading researchers in the domain, and are discussed in the following order: