Supporting water utilities, governments and businesses to deal with uncertainty and impacts of climate change, and implement long-term planning to ensure cities and towns maintain water security.
Utilities are planning and managing service delivery under an increasingly uncertain future, due to phenomena such as climate change and population growth, as well as a range of potential external disruptors including technological advances and changes in ownership models.
For more than two decades, ISF has supported water utilities and local governments, through our integrated approach to drought response and long-term planning, drawing on systems thinking and scenario planning. We help our partners understand the opportunities, risks and potential business models.
We assess how different supply and demand options increase water security in the long term, as well as rapidly in response to drought. We have designed adaptive planning frameworks for ensuring water security in the face of uncertainty and seek to ensure that all viable options are kept open for later consideration as the assumptions about the future are better understood.
PROJECT | 2022-2023
Future catchment scenarios
Six future scernarios were developed to help WaterNSW develop meaningful insights for catchment planning and decision-making processes.
PROJECT | 2022
Building utility resilience to climate shocks
Demonstrating how diverse actors are increasing resilience by adapting their assets to climate induced shocks.
PROJECT | 2019-2021
Corporate risk: WaterCorp
Water Corporation, Western Australia asked ISF to provide research that would support improvement of the organisation’s risk management framework. The initial research objectives were to: 1) explore the potential to develop better approaches and models for stratifying corporate risk drawing on a wide range of skills and disciplinary fields; and 2) apply these methods across multiple areas of the business, with risks arising from a wide variety of causal factors.
Employing a flexible research design, ISF considered approaches to risk prioritisation and stratification from outside the realms of traditional risk management in the water industry. With no obvious candid methods to transplant, the ISF and Water Corporation project team developed a novel approach to risk stratification that would be meaningful across Water Corporation’s business, and that would enhance existing risk management processes. The approach drew from various fields including complex system thinking and multi criteria decision support, but was in the end a co-creation between ISF researchers and Water Corporation risk practitioners. The project produced a novel risk stratification process, a decision framework, and a set of risk characteristics for assessing risks on criteria beyond likelihood and consequence.
Location: Western Australia
Client: Water Corporation
Researchers: Simon Fane, Alison Atherton, Pierre Mukheibir, Joanne Chong
PROJECT | 2019
Review of the decision-making framework for allocating water during extreme water shortages
Supporting the NSW Government in deciding how water from the Murray- Darling system should be allocated during extreme water shortages.
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PROJECT | 2018-2019
Decision framework for the 2020 Lower Hunter Water Plan
ISF developed a framework to guide the utility's planning for – and investment in – a future in flux.
PROJECT | 2016-2018
Decision-making process framework for water and wastewater servicing
A decision-making framework that makes it easier for multiple stakeholders to take a consistent approach to water management.
IMPACT STORY
Demand management beats dams and desalination during drought
Governments, water agencies and industry around Australia, and from as far afield as California and São Paulo, are turning to the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures for fresh ideas on how to best manage the supply of, and demand for, the world’s most precious resource, water.
PROJECT | 2017
External disruptors for the Melbourne Sewerage Strategy
The Melbourne Sewerage Strategy addressed how Melbourne’s sewerage system would be developed over the coming 50 years to protect public health and enhance liveability, productivity, prosperity and environment of the metropolitan region.
ISF's research facilitated the identification of potential ‘disruptors’ – external factors and risks – to sewerage management, conducting a horizon scan of external factors across multiple sectors. It applied futures methods with water industry practitioners and considered global megatrends, such as climate change, resource scarcity, new technologies and rising inequity.
Two workshops engaged water industry practitioners and those stakeholders from related sectors. They identified novel future factors, prioritised disruptors and assessed how they might manifest as risks or opportunities for the sewage system. ISF synthesised this information into a simple yet informative infographic communication tool.
Location: Melbourne Australia
Client: Melbourne Water Utilities
Researchers: Simon Fane, Pierre Mukheibir, Joanne Chong, Emily Prentice
PROJECT | 2017
Roadmap for urban water security: Sao Paulo, Brazil
In 2014 and 2015, the metropolitan area of São Paulo, Brazil endured a two consecutive seasons of extremely low rainfall and declining water availability more severe than in any period on record. The city of over 20 million people came perilously close to a crisis situation of widespread water shortages.
ISF was engaged by the Government of São Paulo, with support from the Australian Water Partnership, to rapidly assess the responses to date including supply, bill rebates, leakage management and water efficiency, and develop the high-level Roadmap for Urban Water Security for metropolitan São Paulo.
This roadmap includes high-potential and cost-effective long term readiness initiatives, regulatory and institutional developments to enable funding for water efficiency initiatives, a mechanism for planning contingency measures to be triggered as drought progresses, and research/analytical and planning requirements to prepare a detailed action plan.
Location: Sao Paulo
Client: Australian Water Partnership (AWP)
Researchers: Stuart White, Joanne Chong
PROJECT | 2016-2017
Water scarcity risk for Australian farms and the implications for the financial sector
ISF partnered with AgTech company The Yield to come up with a new method for calculating the water risk exposure for farms.
PROJECT | 2015
Managing drought in California: learning from Australia
While Australia’s climate is prone to droughts, the Millennium Drought was one of the worst in its recorded history with record low rainfalls resulting in significant falls in dam levels across urban centres.
Australia’s response demonstrated world-leading innovation and exceptional examples of water planning and management in responses to the threat of a water crisis. There were also many lessons learned and ideas generated about how to improve urban water planning.
ISF worked in partnership with the Alliance for Water Efficiency and the Pacific Institute for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and the Water Research Foundation to conduct research that would enable utilities and government agencies in California to learn from Australia's drought experience and rapidly develop more sophisticated drought response plans.
Researchers captured knowledge through a series of case studies with Australians affected by the Millennium Drought, documenting lessons learnt. The resulting report synthesises the key lessons to identify opportunities for California, including: water efficiency programs; modular and scalable supply options; community engagement and communication; pricing mechanisms; and integrating long-term planning with short-term drought response.
Location: California
Client: Alliance for Water Efficiency (USA)
Researchers: Andrea Turner, Joanne Chong, Stuart White
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Managing Drought: Learning from Australia (2016) (Report)
Executive summary also available in Portuguese
AWE Webinar on Managing Drought: Learning from Australia (2016) (Webinar)
PROJECT | 2012
Options assessment framework for long-term water planning
ISF won the Smart Water Fund’s 2012 Service Provider Innovation Award for our contribution to the delivery of innovative outcomes with broad application across the water industry. The award recognised the options assessment framework and process developed as part of this project.
The framework specifically provided, for the first time, an integrated, practical process that guided strategic planning and project-level decisions in the environment of uncertainty and risk in which most water providers operated. It recognised the need for a generational shift away from conventional deterministic planning towards more flexible and adaptive planning and management. This shift was driven by the need to maintain water security in the face of increasing uncertainty in key determinants of water businesses.
The framework provided methods to assess measures against social, environmental and economic criteria, and took into account the vision of the utilities and involves stakeholders in the process. The aim was to help water utilities contribute towards sustainable, liveable, prosperous and healthy cities. The framework comprised four components: a Framework Summary document, a process map, a process manual and a set of analytical method guide sheets.
ISF used an adaptive planning approach to assess suites of options, in terms of assessing potential synergies and/or duplication between options and the potential benefits to system resilience of diverse supplies.
The work incorporated multiple values of water into the decision-making approach, including the way in which water contributes to a sustainable, liveable, prosperous and healthy city, and the values attached to individual supply options.
Location: Melbourne Australia
Clients: Smart Water Fund, Melbourne Water Utilities
Researchers: Pierre Mukheibir, Cynthia Mitchell, John McKibbin, Janina Murta, Natasha Kuruppu, Andrea Turner, Anna Gero, Monique Retamal
PROJECT | 2006, 2010, 2017
Development of metropolitan water plans: Sydney Australia
ISF provided specialised advice and analysis that informed the NSW government's Metropolitan Water Plans for Greater Sydney in 2006, 2010 and 2017, helping them to plan for long-term water security, including during the Millennium Drought. Our work included:
- real options analysis for drought readiness – providing insurance through establishing triggers and processes for infrastructure 'readiness to construct'
- community and stakeholder engagement on water futures, including through the use of appreciative inquiry and art
- cost-benefit frameworks and business cases for water recycling and conservation
- advice on water conservation opportunities during drought response
- decision sequencing during drought
- integrating hydrological, economic and social impact modelling.
Location: Greater Metropolitan Sydney
Client: NSW Government
Researchers: Joanne Chong, Stuart White, Damien Giurco, Simon Fane
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Review of the Metropolitan Water Plan: Final Report (2006) (Report)
Why water sustainability needs more creative thinking (2017) (Article)
Resources
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Managing uncertainty under multiple drivers and disruptors (Conference Poster)
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Managing Drought: Learning from Australia (2016) (Report)
