ABSTRACT
Many engineers enjoy designing and building construction works, however, they tend not to be so keen on their later maintenance and repair work. It is a very pleasant thing to see one of our ideas transformed into a physical reality.However, these constructionworks, especially canals,deteriorateover time and, not only is it necessary to maintain them in good states of repair, but it is also frequently necessary to anticipate this inmaintenance operations before it becomes too late, or tomodernize thembefore they becomeobsolete. Several words have recently come into fashion among hydraulic engineers,
which require a great deal of attention. Some of these are rehabilitation, modernization, maintenance and conservation. The separation between them is not quite clear, but there should be no
doubt that all refer to the fact that hydraulic works should not be left out in the field without any attention being paid to them in order to prevent their deterioration or becoming obsolete. This would mean that the investments put into them are not longer profitable. For us, and this is how we intend to consider it in this book, the term
“rehabilitation” refers to an intervention with respect to a deteriorated construction that requires further work in order to update its services. This may be thought of as being the execution of certain works, not from zero, but commencing with an old construction having substantial problems. Such a case would be a canal with unacceptable filtrations requiring impermeabilization with a new lining, etc. “Modernization” refers to the modification of significant canal elements
that are necessary to confront the new challenges deriving from modern techniques and economy. This would be the case of converting a manually regulated canal into one having automatic control, so that it would be in line with new socio-economic conditioning factors. However, and again with respect to ourselves, the terms “maintenance”
and “conservation” do not involve any substantial differences and refer to the normal operations that have to be periodically carried out to maintain be able to anticipate deterioration.
