Every city faces different water challenges. Some are dealing with increasing risk of flooding, driven by climate change. Others struggle to supply sufficient water for growing populations and economies.
Arup developed the City Water Resilience Approach (CWRA) to help leaders navigate these issues, bringing the most effective practices to always local issues.
Resilience takes time to build. It’s a complex outcome to produce, requiring investments in infrastructure, governance, communication and regulation. The CWRA has helped cities around the world to respond to profound water issues and produce long-term solutions that address each of these dimensions of the resilience puzzle.
One approach, many priorities
At its heart the CWRA provides clear insights on the most effective sequencing and prioritisation with a water programme, helping clients to engage with the complexity of the water system and prepare for changes in demand and use. It helps unlock investment and funding for much needed water infrastructure. It adopts a nature-first ethos, prioritising interventions that don’t rely on hard infrastructure where natural factors can play a role.
The five stages of developing water resilience
The CWRA brings method and insight to a city’s water resilience in 5 key stages:
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Understand the system
Explore shocks and stresses, identify system interdependencies, convene stakeholders, map assets and processes.
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Assess urban water resilience
Assess the city's approach according to the CWRA to identify existing strengths and weaknesses and establish baselines.
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Develop an action plan
The action plan is an holistic evaluation of anticipated benefits and costs and prioritization of key projects.
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Implement the action plan
Based on the city assessment, a plan is developed for realizing interventions that build water resilience.
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Evaluate, learn and adapt
Implementation of resilience measures is evaluated and changes in context and stakeholder involvement are analysed.
Beyond infrastructure
The CWRA highlights the social role of citizens and governance, ensuring the right incentive structure and communications are in place to drive culture change around water and sanitation.
For corporates, the CWRA works hand in hand with business strategy and risk management, establishing how water plays a role in a business’s operations and future.
Finally, the CWRA enables clients to develop solutions at the portfolio level, dovetailing many related projects at once, to achieve resilience at scale.
Bringing resilience to the world
Since creating the CWRA we've worked with cities across the globe, using the framework to explore their individual needs and in many instances develop, and support the delivery of, action plans to improve the city's water resilience.
Download the reports
Explore the work we've done with cities across the world by downloading the characterisation reports and profiles created to date.
Manchester
Download the Manchester Characterisation report
Hull
Download the Hull Charactiersation report
Download the Hull Water Resilience Profile
Rotterdam
Download the Rotterdam Characterisation Report
Thessaliniki
Download the Thessaloniki Characterisation Report
Amman
Download the Amman Characterisation report
Addis Ababa
Download the Addis Ababa Characterisation report
Download the Addis Ababa profile
Kigali
Download the Kigali Charactiersation Report
Musanze
Download the Musanze Characterisation Report
Johannesberg
Download the Johannesburg Characterisation Report
Download the Johannesburg profile
Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth)
Download the Gqeberha Characterisation Report
Cape Town
Download the Cape Town Characterisation Report
Download the Cape Town profile
Miami
Download the Miami Characterisation Report
Mexico City
Exploring the map
The map below provides an interactive overview of cities that have have used the CWRA. The coloured icons represent each city - clicking an icon will reveal more information and allow you download relevant reports. To zoom on the map, either use the controls or simply double click or 'drag' the map around. Click 'home' to restore the map to its original focus.
- Cities where work is currently underway
- Cities where a characterisation report has been developed
- Cities where both a characterisation report and resilience profile have been created
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