Our team were honoured to present on a number of key topics at Singapore International Water Week 2024.
It was a pleasure to connect with Asia's water industry community, and share valuable knowledge on the issues facing communities across Asia.
Below we share our poster presentations, presentation slides and summaries from the event. For more information, or to request a meeting, please contact our team.
Valuing the Invaluable – A Framework for Valuing the Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits of Water Conservation
Amidst changing global climate, population growth and constraints on new infrastructure, water conservation is critical in securing water security and supply resilience across the world. However, the economic benefits of water conservation have not historically been well established or quantified, and therefore not integrated into decision making. In many regions, focus has been on more traditional ‘supply’ side investments, often made in a world of imperfect information regarding supply capacity including rainfall.
We developed and applied an economic evaluation framework for use by governments and water utilities to quantify the costs and benefits of water conservation, ensuring the full spectrum of water conservation outcomes are captured in decision making. While this value is highly dynamic and requires a framework and model to vary the value of water in response to changing hydrological and economic factors, it demonstrated that, in certain circumstances (for example, areas with supply shortages, wastewater system constraints and constraints on new infrastructure), water conservation can deliver significant benefits to the community.
Presented by Alexus van der Weyden
Harnessing Nature Based Solutions to Improve Coastal Protection and Flood Resilience
The effects of climate change that impact coastal erosion are storm surges, monsoon patterns, wind-wave climate, and relative sea-level rise, which will lead to increased erosion rates, coastal squeeze, and more frequent and extreme storm events.
As part of Asia Climate Forum, Alexandra Humphrey Cifuentes moderated a panel featuring:
- Peter Todd, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore;
- Tom Brzostowski, Interim Singapore Country Director, The Nature Conservancy; and
- Dr. Karenne Tun, PhD, Director, Coastal and Marine, National Biodiversity Centre, National Parks Board.
They covered insights including:
- the critical role nature-based solutions can play in ensuring our cities are resilient to coastal inundation and flooding,
- the need to ensure that nature-based solutions are considered on an equal footing with more traditional “grey” solutions,
- the multi-faceted challenges in delivering nature-based solutions, and
- the need to bring our community and stakeholders along for the journey.
To find out more about the panel discussion, contact Alexandra for more information.
Poster Presentations
During the program, we also presented three poster presentations which can be found below:
- Opportunities for funding circularity - examples from Australia
- Valuing alternative governance models to unlock planning at scale for blue-green stormwater infrastructure
- How do you value the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of flood resilience
1. Funding Circularity
Presented by Liyana Fad'l
2. Valuing Alternative Governance Models
Presented by Alexus Van der Weyden
3. Valuing the Costs and Benefits of Flood Resilience
Presented by Alexandra Humphery Cifuentes
