Reliable, resilient and sustainable water management: the Safe & SuRe approach

Impact Statement: Water management faces major challenges over the coming decades, with existing social, ecological, and technical water subsystems subject to emerging global threats such as climate change, urbanization, and depletion of resources. Current methods may be able to deal with these threats individually; however, recent experiences have revealed serious problems, and, without new ideas and approaches, levels of service will be challenged significantly by future change. This research, therefore, provides a framework that addresses the need to provide safe (reliable) water management that is also resilient and sustainable in the face of emerging threats and highlights opportunities for intervention. In doing so, it aims to provide greater clarity to decision makers, allowing better informed choices to be made. It also connects the additional global challenges of climate change, energy, food production, agriculture, and health, all of which may be threats to water management and/or consequences of water system failure.