Physical Asset Management for Critical Utilities— A Systematic Literature Review

Asset management plays a significant role in ensuring the system availability and sustainability of utilities, encompassing critical sectors such as electricity, water, and wastewater. An efficient asset management is a linchpin that safeguards a resilient service to the community through system availability maximization and service disruption avoidance. This study attempts to provide a systematic review of recent literature focused on the asset management of utilities, including asset lifecycle stages and management models. Based on the review, several research gaps that warrant further investigation is highlighted and verified by subject matter experts. Literature review was organized based on the four lifecycle stages of any asset which are planning, acquisition, operations and maintenance, and finally, disposal. A total of 249 articles were included and reviewed as part of this study. Most of articles reviewed tackles asset management in general and few focused on utilities’ physical asset management. Despite the importance of all four stages of assets lifecycle, researchers focused more on asset maintenance with less attention paid to the other stages. The review also highlights the need to develop a holistic asset management maturity model to identify gaps and advocate performance improvement actions. Further research on recent important development such as resiliency, digital transformation, acquisition and outsourcing strategies and their impact on assets is warranted.