A novel assessment framework for analyzing current implementation levels of sewerage and stormwater management components

Sewerage and stormwater systems are quite important in terms of conveying wastewater to treatment plants, reducing the risk of flooding in heavy rains, and human and environmental health in the urban water cycle. The data should be measured accurately and regularly and appropriate methods should be applied for sewerage and stormwater management (SSM). In this study, a novel assessment framework and target definition model is proposed to evaluate the quality of the data and the current implementation level of the practices in SSM. The proposed system includes a total of 54 components covering SSM practices. A unique scoring system is proposed that allows the components to be scored between 0 and 5. The current status of each component is classified gradually (inadequate, poor, insufficient, moderate, good and excellent) with this scoring system. The developed system is tested in three utilities in Turkey. Utility I is better than other utilities in terms of data quality and implementation level of practices. Moreover, utility II scores are better than utility III scores. This framework provides a comprehensive and holistic assessment of the SSM. It also enables the identification of weaknesses and strengths, the creation of a roadmap for effective and sustainable SSM and monitoring the efficiency of the applied methods.