project

Joint Water Matchmaker

The Waterwijs exploratory research includes the development of a new methodology for designing optimised and future-resilient infrastructure. The aim is to achieve a better balance between water supply and demand at the regional level (across utility boundaries), taking into account factors such as future scenarios and the interaction between different types of water sources and water demand.

Background

Different water users have to be supplied with water that meets their different needs in terms of both quantity and quality. Climate change, population growth and competition for freshwater sources between different users mean that this principle involves enormous challenges for the drinking water sector in the Netherlands. Drinking water utilities manage a diverse infrastructure that is responsible for extracting, treating, transporting and delivering clean water to the general public and businesses through complex networks. Water supply and demand will not necessarily correspond to institutional boundaries and they are not always matched over time. A key issue here is storage: how and where can we temporarily store water to bridge the mismatch between supply and demand?

Cross-boundary approach

Optimal solutions for problems with water availability – in other words matching surpluses to shortages, storing surpluses and developing new opportunities to supplement shortages as well as possible – do not respect these boundaries either. In the exploratory Waterwijs project ‘GRROW’, several generations of colleagues in the sector have suggested the (metaphorical) ‘collective Dutch mains’ – in other words: water distribution that transcends the boundaries between utilities – as one of the possible futures in which we would be able to meet these challenges. The ‘Climate Effects on Extraction’ sector study also advised exploring this topic as a possible way of making Dutch drinking water supplies more resilient at the strategic level.
Water availability has a quantitative and a qualitative component, and both components are important in the selection and allocation of sources for water extraction and distribution. The use of alternative water sources should therefore be part of the solution. The quantity and quality of water cannot be separated from the natural systems that supply it, which are not institutionally compartmentalised.

Objective

The aim of this project is to establish a model-based framework that can be used to design a spatial allocation of water on a regional/rural scale in terms of demand, supply and infrastructure.