Safe and SuRe in Practice

Safe and SuRe

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

In 2018 Professor David Butler (Engineering), was awarded an EPSRC IAA Impact and Knowledge Exchange Award in order to collaborate with Scottish Water to build on the original EPSRC funded Safe and SuRe projects.
Researchers, including social scientists, geographers and engineers have been developing new paradigms so that existing urban water systems can be better used, managed, regulated, planned, operated, rehabilitated, retrofitted and redesigned to cope with global uncertainties, such as changing weather patterns and increasing urbanisation. The Safe and SuRe project provides a set of basic definitions and concepts, a logical evaluation framework and intervention strategies, enabling water problems and challenges to be addressed in a holistic manner.

The challenge

Industry are struggling to find consistent ways to quantify the different aspects of the resilience of their infrastructure. In response to the UK Water Act 2014, Ofwat released the ‘Resilience in the Round’ document (Ofwat, 2017), which stressed the need for resilience to be assessed holistically and go beyond the more traditional operational views of resilience. A Resilience framework was developed during the original Safe & SuRe project that enables opportunities for intervention in a water system to be identified in a holistic manner in order to design a more resilient system; however the framework only existed as a only a diagram/concept. 

What was done to help 

The project team decided to develop the resilience framework and translate it into an interactive tool that would be user friendly for practitioners and would provide clear outputs to decision makers, allowing better informed choices to be made.

Creation of this tool which uses a new resilience assessment methodology developed during the Safe & SuRe project would enable water companies to quantify water supply resilience to pipe failure, pump failure, demand increase, and contaminant intrusion. This holistic assessment of network resilience would help to direct investment more precisely. This would improve the efficiency of planned expenditure, and reduce the chance of strategic surprises arising from unassessed failure scenarios.

The Safe & SuRe framework was developed from a diagram into an interactive tool to assist Scottish Water (specifically the wastewater strategy team) to create plans to build resilience holistically. Scottish water co-developed, trialled and evaluated the tool, and this experience informed the ongoing development of Ofwat’s ‘Resilience in the Round’ agenda.

Simultaneously, a decision support tool that built on the GRA research method and code developed during the Safe & SuRe project was also developed up with Scottish Water.

To ensure the proposed activities were delivered on time and to a high standard, an expert panel was used to guide the IAA work. The panel included members from the original Safe & SuRe industry steering group including Peter Drake (Water Industry Forum) and Trevor Bishop (Ofwat), and leaders in Engaged Research including Grace Williams (Engaged Research Manager, University of Exeter) and Rick Holliman (Professor in Engaged Research, Open University).

An event at the end of the IAA grant brought together the expert panel and stakeholders including Scottish Water and Ofwat to showcase the outputs to the rest of the water sector. In addition, the event created a space for academics and practitioners to mix and engage with each other.

The results

Safe & SuRe in Practice was perfectly timed to support the water sector (specifically Scottish Water) to comply with changes in regulation with the UK Water Act 2014 placing a duty on the water and wastewater sectors to “further the resilience objective”.

As a result of this project Scottish Water will track the use of the developed Reliance Framework interactive tool– i.e. where the framework is used in the company and the resilience strategies and decisions made using the framework as Scottish Water enters their next Strategic Review in 2021 and beyond.

Scottish Water will also track the use of the developed decision support tool: in particular the extent to which it is used to direct investment in resilience agreed through the next Strategic Review – i.e. where the tool has been used in the company, and the resilience strategies and decisions that have been supported by it.

The resilience framework tool has provided a platform to commence a conversation around resilience and a means of recording this conversation. It allows the users to understand the definition of resilience, how it applies within the context of a project or strategy and how practically interventions can enhance resilience. This tool will be vital to bridge the gap between resilience strategy and the asset planning/operations teams who be responsible for delivering resilience enhancements through interventions.

The working relationship between Scottish Water and the University of Exeter has showcased the benefits of translating academic research into deliverables for the water industry. The Safe and SuRe work was presented at the International Water Association World Water Congress in Tokyo in September 2018.