A research agenda for the future of urban water management
Exploring the potential of non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid solutions
Sabine Hoffmann (Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)
Ulrike Feldmann (Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)
Peter M. Bach (ETH Zürich, Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Monash University)
Christian Binz (Lund University, Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)
Megan Farrelly (Monash University)
Niki Frantzeskaki (Swinburne University of Technology, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)
Harald Hiessl (Fraunhofer ISI)
Jennifer Inauen (Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, University of Bern)
Lisa Scholten (TU Delft - Sanitary Engineering)
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Abstract
Recent developments in high- and middle-income countries have exhibited a shift from conventional urban water systems to alternative solutions that are more diverse in source separation, decentralization, and modularization. These solutions include nongrid, small-grid, and hybrid systems to address such pressing global challenges as climate change, eutrophication, and rapid urbanization. They close loops, recover valuable resources, and adapt quickly to changing boundary conditions such as population size. Moving to such alternative solutions requires both technical and social innovations to coevolve over time into integrated socio-technical urban water systems. Current implementations of alternative systems in high- and middle-income countries are promising, but they also underline the need for research questions to be addressed from technical, social, and transformative perspectives. Future research should pursue a transdisciplinary research approach to generating evidence through socio-technical "lighthouse" projects that apply alternative urban water systems at scale. Such research should leverage experiences from these projects in diverse socio-economic contexts, identify their potentials and limitations from an integrated perspective, and share their successes and failures across the urban water sector.