Work Plan

Using the 5-year Strategic Plan and an assessment of prior-year accomplishments as guidance, WUCA staff develop a work plan reflecting current priorities for the upcoming year. Priorities for 2025 include the following:

• Climate Resilient Engineering Design Guidance: WUCA will develop a list of practical, tangible, Climate Resilient Design Guidance strategies for a range of water utility engineering, infrastructure, and capital projects, and develop a climate risk hazard matrix that describes common climate risks, impacts and climate hazards that water systems are facing.
• Purpose Driven Climate Data Selection and Application: Case studies for Water Managers, Planners, and Modelers: WUCA will develop case studies to capture how water utility managers, planners, or modelers determine what climate data to use to answer specific planning or modeling question related to water resource planning, water quality, stormwater management, and other topics.
• Climate Resilience Training & Leading Practices in Climate Adaptation Planning: WUCA will continue to enhance understanding of the capabilities and limitations of climate science and share best practices for using it in water, wastewater and stormwater utility adaptation planning and decision making; furthermore, WUCA will leverage the Practitioner Exchange for Effective Response to Sea Level Rise (PEERS) network to build on traditional WUCA climate resilience training aimed at sea level rise resilience.
• Planning Ahead for 20 Years of WUCA: WUCA will initiate the first phase of a comprehensive strategic planning process to prepare for the development of WUCA's next 5-year strategic plan (2027-2031), beginning with an assessment of WUCA as a coalition, including current and future priorities, and developing recommendations for how WUCA can advance priority objectives.
• Assessing Existing and Potential Applications of Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU): This project will assess current and potential applications for the DMDU framework at WUCA utilities, including developing a baseline assessment of where DMDU has been applied, and potential future applications for WUCA members.
• Evaluating the Impact of Case Studies in Climate Adaptation Decision Support: WUCA will work with the Aspen Global Change Institute to help test, validate, and learn from previous WUCA leading practices. The goals are to learn what more generally makes an adaptation case study impactful, investigate the case study development process, and identify what case studies alone cannot achieve.
• Leveraging Climate Modeling to Produce Precipitation Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves: WUCA will develop a prototype for sustained collaboration between utilities and climate modelers to produce precipitation projections that go beyond statistical downscaling; and partner with several entities to scope an approach to replicate work completed by San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to model large-scale storm events and to develop projections for New York City and Philadelphia.
• Advancing Water Equity and Climate Resilience: WUCA will develop implementation strategies for the Equity Framework and Roadmap, co-developed with the US Water Alliance, to incorporate equity into WUCA efforts.
• Making the Case for Climate Resilient Water Infrastructure and Supporting Strategies: In partnership with the Water Research Foundation, develop water sector-specific guidance and a framework on how to make the case for investments in climate-resilient stormwater/wastewater/drinking water infrastructure, considering both structural (i.e., physical assets) and non-structural approaches (i.e., codes and standards).
• Tools & Technology: WUCA will convene to discuss existing, new, and emerging tools and technology that have a particular relevance for climate adaptation.
• Climate Financial Risk: WUCA will discuss and share information, learnings and recommendations related to integrating climate risk into financial planning, bond offering statements and insurance coverage.
• Water Demand Forecasting: WUCA will continue to facilitate peer to peer learning sessions focused on water demand modeling, and how climate change is integrated into demand forecasting and long-range water resource planning.
• Sea Level Rise: WUCA will facilitate peer to peer learning sessions focused on sea level rise adaptation best practices, coordinating with the Practitioner Exchange for Effective Response to Sea Level Rise (PEERS) and building on the WUCA report "Beyond Barriers to Implementation: A Water Sector Perspective on Sea Level Rise Adaptation."
• External Engagement: Partnerships and National Reports- On an as needed basis, WUCA will review and provide comments on critical national adaptation efforts and federal climate reports and communicate with water sector associations and other partners on positions.
• WUCA Network: WUCA will continue to foster engagement with utility collaborators outside of WUCA to create a community of climate adaptation knowledge transfer and sharing and share WUCA products and knowledge with peer utilities and network members.
• Learning From Each Other (LFEO): WUCA will continue to host webinars to learn about emerging science, what others in the sector are doing to address and adapt to climate change, and about how member utilities and practitioners are using climate information. WUCA will strive to bring in new and diverse voices to these conversations to support integration of equity in WUCA webinars.
• Sustain the Coalition: WUCA will continue to organize small group discussions and peer sharing between WUCA staff members outside of the regular meeting schedule and at annual staff meetings to facilitate relationship building.