Water Planning in an Age of Change
Enhancing water infrastructure planning to reduce risk
By David Jermain
October 2020
Over the past two decades, critical infrastructure planning has emerged as a framework that can help decision-makers understand infrastructure interdependencies and enable individual infrastructure plans to better respond to disruptive events. By examining U.S. water planning methods and how interdependencies of critical infrastructure are driving the need for new water planning approaches, the Institute for Sustainable Energy (now the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability) has identified opportunities for enhanced water planning.
Download Report
Key Findings
- By incorporating considerations of near- and long-term risks and opportunities and the interdependencies of water and other critical infrastructure into the planning process, states, cities, and utilities can better coordinate during disruptive natural or human-made events.
- Recommended steps for evaluating and determining if critical infrastructure planning systems and processes are adequate or not include:
- conducting a statewide review of how critical infrastructure is interconnected;
- developing an integrated critical infrastructure planning process that is based on existing planning and reduces costs while maximizing added benefits; and
- piloting scenario planning.
- Enhancing critical infrastructure planning can ensure safe, reliable, and affordable essential services for the 21st century.