Trends, pressures and performance of UWCS in lead and partner cities. Political and sOcial awareness on Water EnvirRonmental challenges: POWER project deliverable D4.5

Abstract

In the context of increasingly large challenges of water, waste and climate change in cities, ICT facilitated tools, such as the Digital Social Platforms (DSPs) that are developed and demonstrated in the POWER project, may form an important contribution in the efforts of cities to become sufficiently water-wise and be able to face these increasing water-related challenges. In order to do so, a profound understanding of the key challenges is essential to focus DSPs efforts. For this reason the City Blueprint performance Framework and the Trends and Pressures Framework are applied to 75 cities. The Trends and Pressures Framework provides an indication of the main social, environmental and financial challenges that may affect local water management. The City Blueprint performance Framework assesses the integrated water management performance of a city. Based on these assessments a definition of water-wise management could be formulated that can help cities envision their key objectives. In total, five cross-cutting water- related challenges have been identified that may form a key focus for application of DSPs or other ICT facilitated interactions between politicians, professionals and citizens. These include:  The critical triangle: Drinking water, sanitation and wastewater treatment  The untapped potential of urban wastewater  Improving solid waste treatment: a criticality of sustainable urban growth  Water use inefficiencies  Water and climate adaptation in cities