Tony Wong • November 11, 2024

Pressure Points

Rather than adopt traditional urban servicing approaches, we have an opportunity to direct investment into well-placed, efficient and resilient infrastructure.

Over the years, Australia has led a global evolution in best practice urban water man agement, culminating in the Zntroduction of integrated, water-sensitive urban design. In less predictable and "limits to growth" scenarios, water must be managed in a more integrated and adaptive way. Reorienting the existing infrastructures, institutions and capacities towards this new integrated approach is the key challenge for developed cities.


Cities are Australia’s economic powerhouses, generating over 80 per cent of our GDP and home to more than 80 per cent of our people. But our current infrastructure approaches make us vulnerable to the combined challenges of population growth, urban intensification and climate extremes. Ageing infrastructure, increasingly brittle built environments and traditional technologies and practices that historically served cities well cannot address these complex modern challenges.


There is widespread agreement in Australia that conventional water-management approaches are inadequate to meet the diverse and complex needs of cities. The urban water infrastructure and governance system remains focused around incremental improvement of 20th century solutions and experience, pursuing conventional water-management approaches that remain fragmented and technologically-based in response to 21st century water challenges.


Traditional urban servicing supports population growth by increasing supply, and typically involves expensive, large-scale infrastructure with long implementation lead times, making it difficult to respond nimbly to crises or changes to demographic and development patterns. It embeds inefficiencies and tends to shift problems between service providers who operate in isolation. The result is piecemeal planning, rigid systems and inefficient outcomes that cannot be sustained in the increasingly complex, uncertain and rapidly changing context of cities – with large direct and indirect costs.


Instead, we need more diverse water sources and new infrastructure solutions. Our cities are water-supply catchments with a diversity of water sources, including stormwater and recycled greywater and blackwater that can be harnessed and treated to a standard that is fit-for-purpose. Access to these multiple sources with the goal of supplementing the traditional water source is supported by new infrastructure solutions that serve multiple functions related to drought proofing, flood management and protection of the ecological values of the natural environment. They must be integrated, smart and able to protect Australians from extreme weather events, which have multi-billion dollar impacts from infrastructure damage and productivity losses.


There is increasing evidence that green infrastructure can deliver a net positive economic benefit to urban communities. Our cities can provide ecosystem services.


Establishing a network of blue-green corridors provides the supplementary drainage system for safe flood conveyance while fostering highly connected spaces for improving and/or returning biodiversity to our cityscapes.


These green infrastructures protect and improve ecological values of urban environments and adjoining waterways by raising the quality of stormwater runoff. And this enhanced quality enables stormwater to be a significant additional source of supply, particularly for non-potable uses.


The national evolution of urban water management towards integrated urban water management is now entrenched, through (i) the integration of water services (water supply, sewerage, drainage and flood management and environmental protection); and (ii) the integration of water infrastructure planning and design with water-sensitive urban planning and design.


We know that we need to invest in new infrastructure to accommodate our growing population. But rather than adopt traditional urban-servicing approaches, we have an opportunity to direct this investment into well placed, efficient and resilient infrastructure.


As well as delivering liveable cities and sustainable water, energy and food resources, these new infrastructure solutions can improve productivity. Better functioning towns and cities have the potential to increase our economy by $29 billion.


Contemporary thinking in infrastructure delivery emphasises hybrid systems, which augment traditional infrastructure with new flexible, decentralised infrastructure and nature-based solutions. They are supported by new investment and management models. They can incorporate combinations of:

  1. hybrid social-technical solutions, which are infrastructure solutions co-created and managed by diverse organisational stakeholders, and include the community
  2. hybrid centralised-decentralised water infrastructure that combines critical existing centralised infrastructure with new local infrastructure solutions
  3. hybrid grey-green infrastructure incorporating conventional engineering infrastructure with nature-based solutions
  4. hybrid public-private co-investment and co-management/operation, at a time when governments face increasing resource constraints
  5. hybrid local government-state government governance and administration, enabling vertical government integration with multiple benefits across scales and sectors.


These hybrid solutions reflect local social, economic and environmental conditions. They can be customised, modular and implemented to complement existing trunk infrastructure as and when needed. This allows them to service population growth as it occurs, including out-of-sequence urban development patterns; defer or avoid investments for major resource development and trunk infrastructure augmentation; deliver water services as well as amenity and ecological services; and rapidly respond in changing situations.


They also allow us to continually embrace opportunities provided by emerging technologies. For example, digital technologies and smart control allow hybrid systems to respond faster to changes, increasing infrastructure resilience and service efficiency. Smart infrastructure, enabled through digital technologies, or the Internet of Things (IoT), is important for integrated system planning, operation and performance, because it enables more accurate, current and systemwide information.


And they present the opportunity to look beyond water to meet the challenge of ensuring liveable, resilient and prosperous cities. Water serves as a powerful entry point to catalyse transformative opportunities for improving services and performance through large-scale integration across multiple sectors.


Smart technologies and new energy opportunities are currently disrupting traditionally siloed urban infrastructure services, leading to an emerging industry at the water–energy–food–waste nexus. This industry urgently needs new systems-based solutions to deliver long-term economic and community benefit. It can be best enabled by taking a circular economy/industry/ecology approach to urban planning.


This is particularly relevant when coupled with urban planning for mixed-use urban planning and developments (residential/commercial/industrial), including the water resource interaction between urban activities and peri-urban high-value agriculture production development.


Conclusion

Australia’s urban water sector is a recognised global leader in innovative water solutions. Demand management, wastewater recycling and stormwater harvesting are now critical responses to buffer the effects of climate extremes on Australia’s cities and their economies, following the experiences of the Millennium Drought and the floods that followed.


Pockets of urban innovation, addressing particular challenges and opportunities, exist nationally and internationally. Yet nowhere has achieved the cross-sectoral and cross-scale integration of infrastructure services needed to ensure the long-term competitiveness, productivity and sustainability of cities. Infrastructure investment to accommodate population growth in Australian cities provides the catalyst for a transformative pivot towards creating hybrid infrastructure across the water–energy–food–waste nexus.


Creating the enabling environment for transformations such as this on a broader scale must

become our collective mission.


Professor Tony Wong was the chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities in Australia, and currently works at Monash Sustainable Development Institute. He pioneered the water-sensitive cities approach and has advanced new understandings of the relationship between the societal and biophysical dimensions of water security and city waterscapes.


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