Water Utility Climate Alliance
Delivering reliable, high-quality water requires a delicate balance between water supplies and customer demands.
While water managers continually strive to maintain this supply-and-demand balance through long-term water resource planning and demand management, new challenges exist due to the impacts of climate change, putting the world's water resources at risk.
The Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) is dedicated to enhancing climate change research and improving water management decision-making to ensure that water utilities will be positioned to respond to climate change and protect our water supplies.
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WUCA co-hosts "Creating Resilient Cities" forum in Austin, Texas
Along with Austin Water and the City's Office of Sustainability, WUCA co-hosted a forum on creating resilient cities on May 2, 2018.
Sessions explored the potential impacts of climate change and climate-related extremes on water utilities and offered examples of effective adaptation solutions from utilities around the nation.
WUCA members present at AWWA Sustainable Water Management Conference
WUCA members presented at the 2018 AWWA Sustainable Water Management Conference on March 27 in Seattle, Wash. The sessions provided strategies on how to best prepare and adapt to the critical effects that climate change can have on water systems, and explored innovative approaches utilities have taken to adapt their operations and ensure a sustainable water supply for the future.
Presentations:
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Planning for Sea Level Rise: An AGU Talk in the Form of a Co-Production Experiment Exploring Recent Science
The Water Utility Climate Alliance first defined the term "actionable science" in 2009. We increasingly recommend that the best path to creating actionable science involves a "co-production" dynamic bringing together scientists and decision makers.
This process was successfully employed by WUCA member David Behar recently, to develop a set of consensus statements regarding probabilistic projections of sea level rise with fellow decision makers and climate scientists. This white paper was presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans in December 2017.
Key messages from WUCA
Warming is here and now
Climate adaptation planning is not just about the future. Water utilities are experiencing the effects of a changing climate on their water resources today.
Know your system and explore its vulnerabilities
Assess your water system to identify vulnerabilities. Risks can only be reduced if they are identified.
Plan for multiple futures
Predicting the future is not feasible but anticipating plausible warmer future climates is. Prepare to face a variety of scenarios.
Capacity building and assessment are part of the adaptation equation
Developing the technical and managerial expertise to identify and assess climate risks to a system is as much a part of adaptation as the steps taken to implement risk reduction measures.