Project

Assessing urban water management with the Quick Scan Tool

More and more cities have come to identify integrated water resource management as a vital strategic goal. The Quick Scan Tool, developed by EBP, now allows cities to quickly generate a systematic evaluation of their urban water management systems.

Climate change, increasing urbanization and a growing demand for water have made it far more challenging, especially for cities, to maintain effective water management systems.
Experts agree that effective water resource management in urban settings depends on the ability of cities to take a holistic view of how water is used and who needs to use it. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to regard flood management plans or drinking water supply systems as independent entities when in fact they are integrally connected to other water sectors and other stakeholders (including those at other administrative levels), as well as being inextricably linked to environmental considerations. This view is confirmed by our many years of experience working on urban water projects both in Switzerland and in various emerging economies.
One further challenge that water management projects often face is incomplete and unreliable data. This can make status analyses more difficult at the outset of a project.

EBP develops tool for urban water management

To give cities and other municipalities a means of evaluating their water management systems, EBP experts from various fields (e.g. water, wastewater, flooding, spatial development and natural hazards) began in 2015 to develop a special tool. They then tested and optimized their result in two pilot studies in Morocco and Tajikistan.

  • Water supply
  • Wastewater
  • Drainage

The tool can be used in both small and large cities.
Quick Scan enables its users to:

  1. Systematically identify problem areas in the three domains
  2. Assess the status of the three domains on the basis of predefined criteria (e.g. water quality, commercial efficiency, coverage of the supply area, adherence to environmental standards)
  3. Assess the extent to which a sufficiently integrated approach has been implemented for optimal urban water management

Cities can use the resulting status assessment for the purposes of long-term strategic planning and prioritizing investments. One special advantage of the Quick Scan Tool is that it can be easily integrated into existing processes or used in the context of a one-time intervention.

Basis for long-term, strategic planning

The core of the Quick Scan Tool is a set of three questionnaires designed to systematically capture the relevant challenges and the sources of these challenges.
Our pilot applications in Morocco and Tajikistan were crucial to our ability to determine whether we had considered all of the possible challenges and to enhance the Quick Scan Tool in terms of user friendliness. After getting very satisfactory results, we can now offer it to our clients.

More information about Quick Scan

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