Europe’s water infrastructure faces an annual investment gap of €23 billion, with many water networks aging faster than they are being renewed, a new report by Sweco has found.
According to the report, Transforming Europe’s Water Infrastructure, water service providers currently invest around €52.5 billion annually in drinking-water and wastewater infrastructure across Europe.
However, threats from climate change, drought, flooding, energy shocks, cyber incidents and ageing infrastructure mean that service providers need to adopt a ‘new investment logic’, which shifts from reactive replacement towards risk-based renewal and more adaptable systems.
‘Resilience and system-design challenge’
“Europe’s water infrastructure challenge is not simply a replacement problem; it is a resilience and system-design challenge,” commented Mattias Salomonsson, water expert at Sweco [pictured]
“The key question is not only how much to invest, but where and when. By prioritising investments according to risk, performance and criticality, municipalities and water utilities can make every investment contribute more to the long-term resilience of the systems they manage.”
Water infrastructure
The report recommends four changes in how water infrastructure is planned and managed. As well as the need to move from reactive replacement to risk-based renewal, municipalities, water utilities and policymakers need to consider moving from individual assets to interconnected systems, using adaptive investment pathways instead of fixed plans, and shifting from data collection to digital and AI-supported decision-making.
According to Sweco, the scale of investment needed to replace Europe’s drinking-water networks is staggering – the implied time to replace said networks ranges from around 90 years in Belgium to approximately 1,000 years in Lithuania.
The report also highlights examples of Sweco projects where digital modelling and operational data have been used to target infrastructure investment, including projects in Jersey, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. It forms part of Sweco’s Urban Insight series. Read more here. Main photo by Anna W Thorbjornsson.
