UWIN INTEGRATION TASK FORCE

Objective

Urban water Sustainability Indicators provide a roadmap and compass for our collective research efforts, thus contributing to a concrete and internally consistent set of indicators is a key integrative activity within UWIN. The objective of this task force is to provide guidance on how UWIN teams may engage with and contribute to the indicators framework. 

We are fundamentally concerned with two sets of scientific questions:

• How well do urban regions (“cities”) perform in terms of water sustainability, in terms of equity outcomes as well as economic and environmental outcomes?
• What pathways (including technological, institutional, and financial pathways) exist to promote greater levels of urban water sustainability?

Both of these questions require a concrete and measurable set of variables that may be used as a map and compass for assessing sustainability transitions. We aim to produce a comprehensive list of indicators and manner of quantification. We also note integrative activities that researchers should participate in which link their indicator work with other task forces including test beds, the web-decision tool, and synthesis papers.

To do this, effort is needed from UWIN researchers in three broad activities:

1. Ongoing development of sustainability indicator framework. There is no prefabricated set of urban water sustainability indicators; rather, this must be developed as part of our research efforts. Until now we have developed a large list of potential indicators that are measurable in a given geography, however further work is needed to distinguish between indicators within at least three broad categories, and which exist across multiple spatial scales:

• Pressures: Exogenous environmental or contextual factors that constrain actions and the efficacy of actions, and that have independent effects on conditions and outcomes. For example, climatic changes, public opinion, and existing infrastructure might fit in this category.
• States: Sustainability conditions or outcomes, such as water quality, exposure to risk, or water supply stress.
• Responses: Actions that are hypothesized to influence conditions and outcomes, such as governance structures and management practices.

2. Actively connect specific projects with the broad framework. Most if not all UWIN teams engage with research questions on at least one indicator in one of these broad categories. UWIN teams should make an effort to explicitly link their work to at least two variables within the indicators framework and assess the relationships between them. Indicators team leads can support UWIN researchers by developing processes for collaboration and coordination regarding indicator development and measurement.

3. Contribute to the measurement of indicators and assessment of pathways. While it is possible to outline conceptually a framework for indicators, we lack data to comprehensively assess all indicators in any particular place. Projects within UWIN should actively contribute to the development of datasets containing real-world indicator data.

We envision that UWIN teams may define new research projects or retasking of current projects within UWIN to produce the products below. When conducting a study related to indicators, we ask that researchers follow three essential steps:

1. Adopt and explicitly specify a theoretical lens that specifies the important characteristics of the water system
2. Define and characterize the given indicators within the chosen region, and
3. Where possible, estimate these indicators through empirical measurements or models. At a minimum, articulate the measurement or modeling requirements to generate sound estimates.

Products

We envision the following products to emerge from indicator projects within UWIN:

• A document, potentially accompanied by a web tool, that defines indicators in greater detail and that will serve as a blueprint for cities to assess their performance in “One Water” objectives. This document will characterize each indicator in the following dimensions:
  • Use: How does this indicator direct cities to desirable outcomes?
  • Scale: At which scales can they be produced?
  • Filter: Which eco-climatic regions are these indicators useful?
  • Quantification: How would a city (or other entity) go about quantifying or measuring this indicator?
• Ongoing engagement with water professionals and stakeholder groups to enhance and revise the indicators framework. These efforts should reflect an understanding that representation and engagement with the performance indicators used by community organizations is necessary to develop robust water sustainability indicators, and assess progress towards sustainability.
• A UWIN-wide document summarizing our collective wisdom on and connection to indicators, including in particular:
  • A matrix of all indicators and the connection of UWIN projects to each indicator (in that it is defined, measured, and modeled as a variable in analysis)
  • Brief detail from each team on each indicator they work with, including how it may be measured (and at what scale), as well as a reference for existing measures.
• Coordinate with the Integrated Web Tool, in order to integrate indicators data with a particular focus on answering two questions:
  • How simple of a model or set of observations will generate reasonable accuracy?
  • Can the model be produced with nationally available data?