Manage water by predicting the future
At a glance
Innovation isn’t a product we offer, it’s who we are and it’s built into how we approach each new mission. Together with our clients we create lasting community benefit.
The mission
The challenge
Water is a basic human need. But how we use it is changing, partly due to the demands our cities put upon it and partly due to the impact climate change has on water supply and availability.
According to World Bank research1, two-thirds of the world's megacities are in regions that are now vulnerable to having too much water, not enough water or both. Insufficient water causes huge disruptions to service supply. Too much water can result in extensive flood damage. Both result in severe social and economic impacts on the community.
With availability less certain, government and utilities need to be more transformational in their approaches to sustainable water management.
Urban water cycles are complex and multifaceted, taking in: design, construction, and infrastructure maintenance. Each facet and each build has to be ready for whatever climate change throws at it. But basing a water management system purely on historical data is a risk and more integrated thinking and smarter solutions are needed.
Our work with Metro Vancouver, is a great example of how we met that need.
Metro Vancouver, a federation of 21 municipalities in Canada, sought help to identify future climate projections of key climate parameters. They initiated the integration of effective data management and analysis into its stormwater and sewer management framework so that their engineering designs could more directly account for climate change.
Their planning and investment decisions were based on historic levels of rainfall records and combined sewer overflow records, even though climate change is causing significant shifts in those patterns.
That needed to be brought into a modern reality through innovative thinking.
Our response
GHD assisted Metro Vancouver in developing a framework for incorporating the uncertainty associated with future climate projections into the development of adaptation strategies for stormwater and sewer management.
Building a methodology for identifying risk and the vulnerability in Metro Vancouver’s current system allowed us to create a robust new digital platform. This new platform is now based on predictive future data stacks that combines historic data with global research so future climate predictions and investment choices can be made.
Andrew Betts, Business Group Leader in GHD’s Integrated Water Management team, discusses the project and the challenge posed to us by Metro Vancouver
The impact
By identifying future climate projections, risk is better understood. The new framework enables good practice and adaptive water management strategies. Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves were developed for both the 50-year and the 100-year planning horizon, to assist in sewerage and drainage infrastructure planning and design.
Metro Vancouver now has a framework in place to more directly account for climate change.