Risk Analysis for the Integrated Water Service Manager in the Selection of Investments—The ALARP Applied to the Program of Interventions

For the managers of the integrated water service, the program of interventions (PdI) is particularly important for the financial success of the management project. Through the PdI, the integrated water service manager identifies existing critical issues and tries to overcome them through investments in infrastructure development and improvement of the quality of the service provided. The solutions adopted fall under the tariff construction mechanism, conditioning the economic formula that determines the tariff increase coefficient. Therefore, the ex-ante evaluation of the risks associated with maintenance, and new construction work is of enormous importance. The objectives of the study were twofold: to apply for the first time a model inspired by the recent bibliography on risk assessment in the civil projects sector to the integrated water service sector, which supports the manager in the risk analysis of the projects that might result during the intervention program; to make infrastructure management more efficient, reducing maintenance costs and increasing profits. This model integrates the ALARP technique, mainly used in high-risk sectors to estimate the loss of human life, with the traditional risk analysis of investment projects. It allows the integrated water service manager to identify two operational, tolerability, and investment acceptability thresholds, useful to define areas of action characterized by greater technical–economic feasibility.