Socio-technical modelling tools to examine urban water management scenarios (Project A4.3)

Overview

This project is developing a user-friendly computer-based modelling platform to inform planning and decision-making about water management and adaptation strategies at the city or regional scale. The model, known as DAnCE4Water (Dynamic Adaptation for enabling City Evolution for Water), simulates technical, social and economic dimensions of a city’s integrated urban water system as it changes over time in response to water management strategies and drivers such as climate change, societal shifts and population growth. By using the model to explore many future scenarios, users can identify strategies that result in resilient urban water outcomes, as well as strategies that will most effectively achieve transition to a water sensitive city.

Key outcomes

The outputs of this project include:

• a web-based modelling platform for testing socio-technical, climate adaptation and urban planning scenarios of integrated urban water systems;
• a software manual, tutorials and industry short-courses for software implementation;
• reports and other publications on documenting the interactions between (i) urban form and efficiency of water infrastructure; and (ii) social, economic and water systems; and
• guidelines on how to achieve effective integration between urban form and water infrastructure in changing climate, social and economical futures.

Researchers have worked on applying DAnCE4Water at the community scale for an Elwood case study in conjunction with Mapping water sensitive city scenarios (Project A4.2) and at the regional scale for CRCWSC partner South East Water.