Abstract
Water resource management in the UK is multifaceted, with a complexity of issues arising from acute and chronic stressors. Below average rainfall in spring 2020 coincided with large-scale changes to domestic water consumption patterns, arising from the first UK-wide COVID-19 lockdown, resulting in increased pressure on nationwide resources. A sector wide survey, semi-structured interviews with sector executives, meteorological data, water resource management plans and market information were used to evaluate the impact of acute and chronic threats on water demand in the UK, and how resilience to both can be increased. The COVID-19 pandemic was a particularly acute threat: water demand increased across the country, it was unpredictable and hard to forecast, and compounding this, below average rainfall resulted in some areas having to tanker in water to ‘top up’ the network. This occurred in regions of the UK that are ‘water stressed’ as well as those that are not. We therefore propose a need to look beyond ‘design droughts’ and ‘dry weather average demand’ to characterise the management and resilience of future water resources. As a sector, we can learn from this acute threat and administer a more integrated approach, combining action on the social value of water, the implementation of water trading and the development of nationwide multi-sectoral resilience plans to better respond to short and long-term disruptors.
Highlights
England has endured three periods of national lockdowns (23/3/2020–10/05/2020, 05/11/2020–02/12/2020, 06/01/2021–08/03/2021) [1] and prolonged periods of social restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
As the pandemic becomes a longer-term disruptor, the ability to meet organisational resilience objectives will remain a key challenge for the UK water sector
This study aims to analyse the UK Water Sector’s organisational resilience to multiple stressors, by evaluating the impact of COVID-19 and weather hazards observed during 2020 on water demand
Summary
England has endured three periods of national lockdowns (23/3/2020–10/05/2020, 05/11/2020–02/12/2020, 06/01/2021–08/03/2021) [1] and prolonged periods of social restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to understand the pandemic’s impact on water systems globally have focused on organisational response [2,3,4]; tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater [5,6]; understanding changes to water consumption [7,8,9,10] and identifying how digitalisation could provide tools to reimagine water infrastructure to better cope with future needs, based on learning from the pandemic [11]. As the pandemic becomes a longer-term disruptor, the ability to meet organisational resilience objectives will remain a key challenge for the UK water sector. An organisation’s resilience is underpinned by its capacity to mitigate, adapt, cope and learn from a crisis [12]. Pre-existing pandemic plans were inconsiderate of the scale of the crisis, resulting in the re-evaluation of business continuity and response plans by some organisations [4]
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