News – News & UpdatesWater Breakthrough Challenge
March 23, 2023
Breakthrough 2 winning project, Enabling Water Smart Communities (EWSC) share an update on the project and introduces the concept of Integrated Water Management (IWM).
This blog was originally published on the EWSC website and has been re-posted on the Ofwat Innovation Fund website with permission. Images courtesy of Eddington Development and Anglian Water.
Integrated Water Management is the heart of the Enabling Water Smart Communities project.
IWM is a collaborative approach to land and water governance that integrates social, environmental, and economic factors to deliver coordinated management of water storage, supply, demand, wastewater, flood risk, water quality and the wider environment.
Our current water management system has many components including water supply, flood risk management, water quality, research, and resource planning. Each of these require a input from a variety of organisations with different interests, (developers, land owners, architects, farmers, legislators, etc.), leading to a fragmented sector. This means easier and cheaper solutions have historically been favoured, which significantly impacts our natural environment and misses opportunities for better outcomes.
Achieving Integrated Water Management is fundamental to meeting long-term challenges facing our relationship with water, including flood risk, and river and soil health.
The image on the right is an example approach developed by Arup to IWM which we have used during the project development.
It looks like building new homes with water efficient technology to reduce water use, such as dedicated rainwater harvesting and utilising non-potable water for activities like flushing toilets. Using harvested rainwater can reduce household demand for water by 30-50%.
It looks like incorporating sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) into new developments, which are essential to addressing growing surface water flood risks and tackling water quality problem. Alongside managing flood risk SuDS can clean polluted water running off hard surfaces like roads and reduce the likelihood of sewage spills into watercourse. They also create valuable green spaces in urban settings, and provide more attractive, heatwave-resilient places for local people. By integrating drought resistant plants and landscapes we optimise our water resources for the future.
Genuine water cycle management, from source to sea, is very difficult to achieve. IWM offers solutions which account for treating water where it falls, reducing pollution, preventing flood risk and improving water quality both as an amenity and in the environment. IWM is the way we will deliver long-term sustained benefits and improved environmental outcomes.
What makes IWM adoption the holy grail is how difficult it is. The water industry is a system of systems with large networks of governance and bodies which make efforts to integrate them naturally difficult. Many projects focus too much on the cost and not enough on the tangible value which include lowering flood risk, improving water quality, providing resilience in developments as well as protecting biodiversity and nature.
The EWSC project will be developing pilot demonstrator sites to showcase approaches to integrated water management and the technologies in a variety of different settings.
To stay informed about developments and updates on the project, visit the EWSC website and follow the team on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Every person, business, hospital, school, farm, town and village relies on a healthy water system. This complex system (which includes clean drinking water supply, wastewater and sewage networks) is facing many challenges that must be tackled to ensure its resilience and long-lasting benefits for society and the environment.
Key challenges include tackling leaks, preventing pollution, removing pollutants from waterways, improving water efficiency, reducing emissions, improving flood and drought resilience, finding sustainable uses for sewerage and wastewater, and supporting vulnerable customers. Many of these are not necessarily unique to the water sector.
We want to invite innovators from outside the water sector to bring their new perspectives and expertise to bear on these challenges – the £4m Water Discovery Challenge is open to entries from any sector and organisation until 5 April 2023. Up to 20 teams of the most promising innovators from outside the water sector will be awarded £50,000 to develop their ideas, with expert support and mentoring from water companies. Up to 10 will go on to win £450,000 to turn ideas into pilots.
