Coordinated planning of renewal & maintenance of water infrastructure

About the project StreetWise

Municipalities face a growing challenge as roads, water, and wastewater pipes age simultaneously. Although street and water infrastructure occupy the same physical space, maintenance and renewal works are typically planned and financed in separate organisational silos. This lack of integration often leads to repeated excavations, higher lifecycle costs, increased carbon emissions, and prolonged disruptions for citizens and local businesses. 

Streetwise aims to address this governance problem by establishing an innovative policy lab. Bringing together Skellefteå kommun as the needs owner, Luleå Technical University (LTU) as the coordinating research partner, and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, the project co-designs, trials, and institutionalises new municipal routines and policy instruments. By operationalising research-based tools such as the MURM simulator, which calculates optimised "coordination windows", StreetWise enables data-driven, cross-departmental decision-making without building complex administrative systems. 

Customer benefits and value creation

By transitioning from reactive, fragmented repairs to proactive, coordinated corridor maintenance, StreetWise delivers clear and measurable benefits: 

• Minimised Disruption: Synchronizing street and pipe renewals reduces the frequency of repeated excavations, leading to better traffic flow, fewer service interruptions, and less hassle for residents and local businesses.
• Cost Savings: Optimizing joint investments drives down long-term infrastructure lifecycle costs, maximizing the efficiency of public tax dollars and improving municipal budget predictability.
• Reduced Environmental Impact: Coordinated planning and efficient construction logistics directly lower carbon dioxide emissions, supporting local and national climate goals.
• Transparent and Decision Support: Rather than relying on "gut feeling," municipal departments receive a neutral framework to visualize tradeoffs and distribution effects, clarifying exactly when and how coordination creates net societal value.
• Scalable Knowledge for Other Municipalities: The project packages its findings into a transfer manual (including templates and guidelines) that is disseminated through the Dag&Nät network, enabling other public authorities to replicate these sustainable management practices.