Background/Objectives

Cities are wrestling with the practical challenges of transitioning urban water services to become water sensitive; capable of enhancing liveability, sustainability, resilience and productivity in the face of climate change; rapid urbanization; degraded ecosystems and ageing infrastructure.

Transitioning to more sustainable, liveable and resilient communities requires integrated and adaptive approaches to water services that improve flexibility and agility for coping with unpredictability and change, while delivering multi-functional benefits that support social wellbeing, healthy ecosystems and strong economies. The One Water paradigm is gaining pace in the United States, Canada and other countries, but organizations are still grappling with how and where to start their One Water journeys.

Approach/Activities

The Water Sensitive Cities Index (WSC-I), a benchmarking and diagnostic tool and process to assess the water sustainability and resiliency of a municipal or metropolitan city. The Index comprises seven goals and 34 indicators that span the full range of attributes that define water sensitivity, including governance, community capital, equity, productivity, ecology, urban design and adaptive infrastructure. The Index has been designed to assist decision-makers in prioritizing actions for water-related practices to improve water system planning and management.

The Index was developed over a two-year period by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC), a pan-Australian research consortium involving three of Australia’s leading universities along with key State government organisations, water corporations and industry partners. The development process included prototyping, refinement and piloting, trialing, and industry release, and was guided by an national industry steering committee and an internal working group consisting of CRCWSC leaders and key researchers from across the range of disciplines covered by the WSC Index. This process aimed to ensure that both scientific rigor and end user considerations informed and shaped the tool.

Guiding and motivating action for change is difficult as it can be difficult to achieve coordinated and aligned action across multiple organizations. The Index helps guide coordinated action among stakeholders, through the collaborative workshop delivery model, led by an accredited provider. The facilitated workshop process is important in fostering a shared understanding of what IWM/One Water principles mean in practice, as well as developing consensus on the community’s current performance, and discussing future aspirations. These discussions are critical in establishing the understanding, motivation, and capacity between stakeholders to drive their IWM transition. Data from the workshops are entered into a web-based platform that enables visualizations of benchmarking results for a range of audiences. 

Results/Lessons Learned

Applied in more than 65 cities to date, the WSC-I results have enabled government agencies, water providers and utilities to: understand how a city is managing water today; develop a better understanding of local strengths and weaknesses for being a water sensitive city; greater insight into the outcomes from being a water sensitive city and the types of solution you need; identify transformational water sensitive goals; build relationships and foster collaboration with key stakeholders, and develop management actions and strategies in response to key priorities. It has proven to be an important catalyst for Integrated Water Management and One Water collaboration and leveraging transformative change.