Infrastructure is more than contract signing and cornerstone laying. Once the ribbons are cut, adequate operation and maintenance is required to reach the life-time potential of the built assets. In many countries, the reality is far from this ideal; Public Utilities struggle to sustain their infrastructure systems. Daily work is dominated by fire-fighting problems, rather than by good business conduct.

The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO has published a new Review and Tool on how Public Utilities evolve into effective institutions. We wanted to learn from successful utility turn-arounds. Eight successful cases were studied to extract the factors that led success. The Tool helps to assess where a utility is in its development or reform process and offers guidance on potential reform paths, accommodating for the political context of the utility. The Tool can support a structured dialogue amongst the stakeholders in a utility reform process, the formulation of a utility-specific reform strategy, and the monitoring of reforms.

The review and tool can be downloaded from the SECO Infrastructure Financing website in the download section at the bottom of the page.

In 2015 significant parts of the Danube River Basin were affected by droughts which negatively impacted different water-dependent economic sectors, vegetation and the aquatic environment. This is the latest of a series of events which occurred in Europe during the last decade. Similarly to the summer of 2003, a large part of continental Europe was affected by a severe drought in summer 2015, as a consequence of the combination of rain shortages and very high temperatures which resulted in high plant water requirement levels. Significant drought phenomena were experienced in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Following the 2015 droughts event, the ICPDR decided at the 18th Ordinary Meeting in December 2015 “to elaborate a report on the impacts of droughts in the Danube Basin in 2015, the measures taken and lessons learned”. The 2015 Droughts in the Danube River Basin Report includes an overview on the main characteristics of the meteorological and hydrological situation during 2015, summarises the main impacts on water-related sectors and includes an overview of measures which were taken by the individual Danube countries. Based on the analysis and discussions, lessons learned and conclusions for the Danube basin wide and national level were agreed which are summarised in the final chapter of the Report. The Report was adopted by the ICPDR at the 19^th Ordinary Meeting in December 2016 and can be downloaded from this page.

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The aim of this Manual is to promote informed decision-making by operators, managers and regulators in their daily routine, as well as to encourage them to engage actively in the national debates that will take place in many countries where the HRWS is being translated into national and local policy, legislation, and regulation.