Delivering the more detailed information base to enable analysis of the longer term investment and affordability picture - beyond the current ten-year plans.
Forward planning of infrastructure needs to respond to future demand and demographic changes - using all levers to maximise future investment including land-use, funding tools, demand management, urban design, shared services etc
Whereas we are seeing innovation and increased use of technology across the other infrastructure sectors, we are not seeing the same with urban water. Likewise with benchmarking, whereas many infrastructure sectors actively benchmark performance as a means of continual improvement, this is not common in the Urban Water sector and an area to promote and develop further.
Discussions we have been holding with local authorities and policy makers have highlighted the particular complexities of stormwater, particularly because of the link to land use and wider urban planning. Internationally, we are seeing a range of innovative practices and design features to reduce the volume of water needing to be managed. We see a lot of benefit from increasing understanding and use of these.
A key question is where does the trajectory of increased co-ordination and improved governance expect to land us - will this be sufficient of are there other incentives or policy changes that could encourage further collaboration, more shared services and improving the overall capability of local government to manage the urban water sector as a whole.