Transitioning to sustainable urban water management systems: how to define expected service functions?

Sustainable urban water management is an increasingly important socio-political objective, however implementation remains ad hoc. While numerous tools and technologies have been developed to achieve sustainable urban water management, significant socio-institutional barriers remain. These impediments include, among others, institutional fragmentation, poor political leadership and technological lock-in. Exacerbated by a lack of theory and conceptual frameworks to link sustainable urban water management principles with on-ground execution, these barriers contribute to low levels of system-wide implementation capacity. Institutional capacity building is advocated in the sustainable urban water literature as a strategy to facilitate implementation; however, institutional capacity building has limited ability to provide an overview of regime operation, considered critical for enabling system-wide change. Focusing on processes, actor agency and institutions, the field of governance studies provides a useful perspective for understanding holistic regime operation and change. Yet the environmental governance literature remains contested; many scholars support a network or market governance approach while others advocate for hybrid approaches. Moreover, the governance systems needed for enabling sustainable urban water management have been given limited attention. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a guiding framework for sustainable urban water governance. Through an emergent research design, systematically drawing on the perspectives of scholars and leading Australian urban water sustainability practitioners, likely attributes of a sustainable urban water management regime were identified. The attributes were focused through the lens of individual, organisational, inter-organisational relationships, and administrative and regulatory regime components. A comparison of the scholarly and practitioner perspectives, together with governance, regime and institutional literatures, explored which governance modes are most likely to enable sustainable urban water management. Overall, this investigation revealed a suite of likely sustainable urban water management regime attributes that are substantially different from traditional and contemporary practice highlighting the considerable regime change required to enable sustainable urban water management. The scholars supported a network governance approach, similar to current adaptive governance and conceptual scholarly urban water management projections, with interdependent actor relations and largely informal administrative arrangements. In comparison, the practitioners advocated hybrid governance arrangements comprising hierarchical and network modes, including a formal administrative framework, with mutually dependent and interconnected actor relationships to facilitate implementation of site specific sustainable urban water management solutions. Both scholars and practitioners supported using a variety of policy instruments, including market governance instruments. The outcomes of this investigation suggest the hybrid governance approach supported by practitioners extends current scholarship by providing detailed information on regime attributes and operation, which can provide insight for practical implementation of network governance approaches which are supported in current urban water management and adaptive governance literature. Additionally, the hybrid approach offers suggestions for successfully integrating the three ideal governance modes and reducing potential tension among the modes. In practice, the proposed framework could be used to design capacity building programs and policy initiatives drawing on mixed governance approaches. To extend this research and improve insight into regime operation and governance dynamics, future research testing the tentative sustainable urban water governance framework in other locations is required.

Urban water management involves urban water supply (import, treatment and distribution of water), urban wastewater management (collection, treatment and disposal of urban sewage) and urban storm water management. Declining groundwater tables, polluted and declining sources of water, water scarcity in urban areas, unsatisfactory urban water supply and sanitation situation, pollution of receiving water bodies (including the ground water), and urban floods have become the concerns and issues of sustainable urban water management. This paper proposes a model for urban stormwater and sewage management which addresses these concerns and issues of sustainable urban water management. This model proposes segregation of the sewage into black water and greywater, and urban sub-watershed level stormwater-greywater management systems. During dry weather this system will be handling only the greywater and making the latter available as reclaimed water for reuse in place of the fresh water supply. During wet weather, the system will be taking care of (collection and treatment) both the storm water and the greywater, and the excess of the treated water will be disposed off through groundwater recharging. Application of this model in the Patiala city, Punjab, INDIA for selected urban sub-watersheds has been tried. Information and background data required for the conceptualization and design of the sub-watershed level urban stormwater-greywater management system was collected and the system has been designed for one of the sub-watersheds in the Patiala city. In this paper, the model for sustainable urban water management and the design of the Sub-watershed level Urban Stormwater-Greywater Management System are described.

Sustainability concerns and multiple socio-environmental pressures have necessitated a shift towards Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) systems. Viewing SUWM systems as sociotechnical, this paper departs from eight factors previously identified by transition research: Pressures, Context, Purposes, Actors, Instruments, Processes, Outputs, and Outcomes as a methodological framework for a structured review of 100 articles. The study seeks to analyze empirical cases of planning and implementing SUWM systems worldwide. A wide range of public actors—driven by social and environmental factors rather than by economic pressures—have initiated SUWM projects so as to locally fulfill defined social and environmental purposes. We provide evidence on the emergence of new actors, such as experts, users, and private developers, as well as on the diverse and innovative technical and societal instruments used to promote and implement SUWM systems. We also explore their contexts and institutional capacity to deal with pressures and to mobilize significant financial and human resources, which is in itself vital for the transition to SUWM. Planned or implemented SUWM outputs are divided into green (wet ponds, raingardens, and green roofs) and gray (rain barrels and porous pavements) measures. The outcomes of SUWM projects—in terms of societal and technical learning, and their institutional uptakes—are often implicit or lacking, which seemingly reduces the rate of desirable change.

Research was conducted to meet two objectives. The first was to identify the factors that assisted emergent leaders at a project level (‘project champions’) in publicly-managed Australian water agencies to successfully promote sustainable urban water management (SUWM). The second was to use this knowledge to develop a suite of management strategies to foster this form of the champion phenomenon. The primary rationale for the research was that the champion phenomenon has been an important, but poorly understood, catalyst for the adoption of SUWM in Australia. The research involved three phases. Phase 1 was a review of the international literature. Phase 2 was a multiple case study involving six water agencies and six project champions. Phase 3 was a field experiment where a leadership development program for 20 SUWM champions was designed, delivered and evaluated. The research found that ‘SUWM champions’ were emergent leaders who displayed distinctive personal attributes (e.g. specific traits and behaviours), worked in environments where there was resistance to the SUWM paradigm, and were adept at influencing others to adopt SUWM principles and practices. The research also found that the transformational (Bass, 1985), distributed (Gibb, 1954) and complexity (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007) models of leadership became relevant to, and helped to explain, typical champion-driven SUWM leadership processes at different times. Three conceptual models were developed to describe the factors that assist SUWM project champions in water agencies. The first is a three-phase model of typical champion-driven SUWM leadership processes, which highlights key champion behaviours during each phase, the role of other SUWM leaders and the importance of contextual factors. The second is a model that describes the individual attributes of champions (e.g. strongly developed traits) and enabling contextual factors (e.g. supportive organisational cultures). The third model explains how the champion phenomenon becomes influential as water agencies increasingly adopt the SUWM paradigm and several enabling contextual factors combine to form a ‘critical mass’. The research produced 28 management strategies to provide guidance on how to create a supportive leadership context for SUWM within water agencies, as well as how to attract, recruit, supervise and develop the leadership capacity of project champions. These strategies also address how to foster effective SUWM champions at an executive level, as well as encourage coordinated forms of group-based (distributed) leadership to advance SUWM. The efficacy of one of these strategies was examined by designing, delivering and evaluating the performance of a customised, six-month, leadership development program for 20 nascent project champions. A seven-tier evaluation framework was used that examined multiple dimensions of the program. Evaluation results for all tiers were strongly positive, with the estimated ‘return on investment’ being 190% after one year. The three theoretically-grounded conceptual models have substantially expanded the body of knowledge concerning SUWM champions. For example, these new models have helped to explain why some SUWM champions are more effective than others. In practice, the research has supported broader efforts to foster ‘water sensitive cities’ by producing the first set of evidence-based strategies to foster the champion phenomenon within water agencies.

Innovative methods presently affect all sectors of the national economy contributing to the progress and overall development of the economy, and the living standard worldwide. Innovations are equally necessary both in the private and in public sectors therefore, the original innovative ideas in each sector are greatly accepted. Similar concept is significant for companies dealing with urban water management. New methods are available mainly for capturing and reusing of rainwater in urban areas which leads to a positive impact on sustainable urban water management regarding today's water scarcity problems. This article describes some of the most popular innovative methods and examples used for rainwater harvesting, recycling and reuse. As a result, the evaluation of the most suitable water harvesting techniques related to sustainable water management, and their application in the city of Brno in Czech Republic are described.

This research aims to explore the feasibility of adopting urban symbiosis for sustainable urban water reduction and management through a bibliometric analysis of key literature. A Scopus-based systematic review was conducted to analyse journal articles related to urban symbiosis, water management, and water reduction, with a focus on their intersection towards achieving sustainability. The outcomes of the systematic review were analysed using bibliometric techniques to examine the evolution of publications, identify leading journals, and determine the authors and countries which have published the most papers on the topic. The research also conceptualised the benefits, barriers, and enablers associated with adopting urban symbiosis for water reduction and management. The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the potential implications and practical implications of urban symbiosis in the context of sustainable water management. The study contributes to the knowledge of the potential of urban symbiosis in addressing the challenges of water management in urban areas and gives insights to policymakers, urban planners, and practitioners interested in implementing sustainable water management practices in urban areas.

Green infrastructure for sustainable urban water management: Practices of five forerunner cities

van de Meene, Susan J. and Rebekah R. Brown, 2009. Delving into the “Institutional Black Box”: Revealing the Attributes of Sustainable Urban Water Management Regimes.Journal of the American Water Resources Association(JAWRA) 45(6):1448‐1464.Abstract: This paper is based on the proposition that the transition to sustainable urban water management has been hampered by the lack of insight into attributes of a sustainable urban water regime. Significant progress has been made in developing technical solutions to advance urban water practice, however it is the co‐evolution of the socio‐institutional and technical systems that enable a system‐wide transition. A systematic analysis of 81 empirical studies across a range of practice areas was undertaken to construct a schema of the sustainable urban water regime attributes. Attributes were identified and analyzed using a framework of nested management regime spheres: the administrative and regulatory system, inter‐organizational, intra‐organizational, and human resources spheres. The regime is likely to involve significant stakeholder involvement, collaborative inter‐organizational relationships, flexible and adaptive organizational cultures, and motivated and engaging employees. Comparison of the constructed sustainable and traditional regime attributes reveals that to realize sustainable urban water management in practice a substantial shift in governance is required. This difference emphasizes the critical need for explicitly supported strategies targeted at developing each management regime sphere to further enable change toward sustainable urban water management.

Towards understanding governance for sustainable urban water management

In Australia, examination of water problems has traditionally centred on the country’s frequent droughts and their impact on agricultural communities. However, since the 1980s, weather patterns have shifted and urban water storages have reached the lowest levels on record. Further, pollution from industry, agriculture and urban regions into waterways, creeks and rivers is degrading entire ecosystems. Studies have been carried out in the 1990s and early 2000s on the tools, techniques and policies to overcome these urban water problems. However, a major barrier to implementation is that the analyses remain largely situated in the fields of engineering, biology, and chemistry. Although some literature examines governance issues, it deals primarily with the professional water management sector, and the actions to be taken on a local scale (within Australia). The goal of this thesis was to transcend this boundary and consider whether barriers to sustainability are a symptom of broader political, social and economic shifts occurring in urban infrastructure in industrialised countries. Accounting for these shifts would provide a comprehensive understanding of the context in which these barriers occur, and improve the implementation of sustainable urban water management. Graham and Marvin’s Splintering Urbanism (Graham & Marvin, 2001) provides this comprehensive framework. Splintering Urbanism is an exploration of how complex social and economic shifts such as globalisation and privatisation intersect with rapidly evolving technologies and transform urban infrastructure networks from a singular centralised, public network to a more fragmented, complex set of networks that are ‘unbundled’. This thesis applied components of the Splintering Urbanism framework related to unbundling in an Australian urban water context. Two case studies in Sydney and Melbourne were conducted. The case studies found that the trends identified in Splintering Urbanism may act as a barrier to sustainable urban water management. However, it also found that the mere presence of these dynamics does not preclude the failure of sustainable urban water management. Rather, the effect depends on the context and institutional conditions. These conditions include: biophysical makeup of the region; the historical and contemporary culture of planning; political leadership; and the relationship between social and environmental advocates and the state and local water authorities. In both case studies, environmental sustainability has not been achieved. In Melbourne, due to a strong social advocacy sector and culture of state-wide planning, the effect on social sustainability, at least, has been minimal. Sydney, in contrast, has experienced a greater impact due to the institutional conditions. These include a lesser degree of state-wide planning and a ii divided policy culture that make the city vulnerable to fragmentation and unbundling. An additional finding showed that the environmental movement facilitates fragmentation and unbundling in Australia. It does so three ways. First, it advocates private sector participation, mechanisms, and ownership of urban water supply and treatment systems. Second, the “neoliberalisation” of environmental groups creates a philosophical division between environmental and social advocates in their solutions to water problems. Third, environmental advocates promote a decentralised approach to water supply and treatment. While decentralised systems may have environmental benefits, they also open institutional pathways to unbundling. Though the findings are specific to these regions, they can be generalised to comment on the effect of unbundling and the privatisation of public infrastructure and services. That is, without leadership and planning, the processes driving splintering become barriers to sustainability. If institutions continue to follow the paths identified in this study, greater fragmentation and social unsustainability may occur, resulting in increased ecological unsustainability.

Small urban centres in the South West Pacific face many challenges regarding urban water management in the light of future uncertainties and climate change. Without implementing sustainable urban water management (SUWM), they risk adverse environmental and public health impacts, but little is known regarding the receptivity of urban water professionals towards its principles and practices. This paper assesses the willingness and ability of urban water managers from the region to implement SUWM. Results demonstrate that whilst aware of current failures, there was limited awareness of sustainable solutions, and a limited ability to identify benefits arising from SUWM implementation. There is a need to increase the opportunities for urban water professionals in the region to acquire skills and implement SUWM. This study identifies the capacity development needed in the region to increase receptivity to SUWM.

Transitioning to more sustainable urban water management is widely accepted as an essential societal objective. While there has been significant progress in developing technical solutions to the challenges faced, numerous barriers remain at the regime level, indicating that further investigation into the regime is required. This paper reports on a social research project aimed at identifying capacity attributes of a more sustainable urban water management regime. Attributes were identified for the administrative and regulatory framework, inter- and intra-organisational and individual regime spheres. Over 125 urban water practitioners specialising in sustainability in Sydney and Melbourne were interviewed to identify the attributes of a more sustainable regime. The attributes reveal that a sustainable urban water management regime emphasises learning, diverse policy tools and institutional arrangements, together with interaction among stakeholders and professional disciplines. The interaction is characterised by respect, trust and mutual understanding. The sustainable regime attributes are compared to the traditional regime and reveal that while progress has been made towards a sustainable regime, additional improvement is required. Attributes identified across multiple regime spheres indicate potential focus areas for capacity building programs or reform efforts to more effectively enable regime change towards sustainable urban water management.

Achieving ‘sustainable urban water management’ (SUWM) is a growing goal for many cities globally, particularly in the face of existing and emerging water threats. Water policy reveals particular ways of framing problems and possible actions. By understanding the components of sustainability, we analyse how key water policies for two major cities frame SUWM. London and Melbourne face significant future water threats, and have tried to address these through strategic water policy. However, they have different approaches to water policy, and different climatic and built-form contexts. Hence, we review the water policy context shaping London and Melbourne, and analyse to what extent their strategic water policy addresses SUWM. Our study shows that the water policy documents analysed do not define SUWM. Despite this, they addressed a number of components of sustainability, strongly focusing on economics and spatial planning, but there were notable gaps such as climate change, uncertainty and complexity. We draw upon the broader water policy context of each city to discuss these differences within the documents. Our results indicate that a broader and more holistic conceptualisation of sustainable urban water management would be beneficial in both policy contexts. Doing so will help achieve this important goal, particularly in light of current and future water threats, including climate change.

Rapid urbanization and climate change have intensified challenges related to urban water management. Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) represents an innovative approach for managing urban water resources, integrating sustainable water management practices within urban planning. This systematic review focuses on the state of WSUD research in India both at a house-hold scale to a catchment or community scale. Despite being in the early stages of WSUD implementation, India’s research highlights key themes, methodologies, and outcomes in this domain. Majority of the literatures reviewed the WSUD measures that is being practised in India from the early 19th century, which include rainwater harvesting methods, stormwater diversions, designing of permeable pavements, sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) etc. A considerable amount of work discusses about the improvements found in various quality and quantity-based parameters before and after WSUD implementation. The findings provide a detailed understanding of WSUD implementation and its applications, aiming to inform policymakers, practitioners, and researchers engaged in sustainable urban water management. Keywords: Water Sensitive Urban Design, Sustainable Water Management, Low Impact Development, Sustainable Integrated Rural Water Management, Smart Water Management, Sponge City.

The provision of a sustainable supply of water is an increasingly difficult task to achieve in many urban environments. This arises because of pressures related to population growth and increased per capita demand for water. Additionally, climate change is impacting the natural cycle of water in many locations, with a significant impact projected for the future. Many scholars advocate ‘sustainable urban water management’ (SUWM) as an approach that can address the root causes of these challenges. Yet the implementation of SUWM and adaptation to climate change in the urban water sector remains limited. This paper argues that spatial planning provides tools and processes that can facilitate the full implementation of SUWM goals, and adaptation to climate change. The potential of spatial planning to achieve SUWM, including sustainable urban water supply management through both supply and demand end initiatives, in light of climate change, is discussed. A framework is developed to consider a broad range of spatial planning interventions that can facilitate adaptation to climate change and SUWM concurrently. The paper provides information and tools to assist water planners achieve SUWM and a well-adapted water sector and urban environment, in an integrated, holistic and comprehensive manner, to meet future water supply needs. Achieving these goals will need collaborative activities across multiple built environment disciplines. Future research activities to advance these goals are outlined.