Managing uncertainty in the provision of safe drinking water

Abstract

The Canadian Water Network, the Alberta Water Research Institute, and the Ontario Centres of Excellence have collaborated to create the Canadian Municipal Water Management Research Consortium, a new initiative to engage municipal water authorities and allow them to access research capacity to tackle mutually identified, critical issues. The challenge of managing uncertainty in the provision of safe drinking water was selected as one such issue. An international expert panel with scientists from Australia, Canada, the USA and Europe was assembled to work with a steering committee of municipal water providers and drinking water regulators. This group has posed the challenge: How best can drinking water providers address risk and uncertainty to assure safe drinking water? Five key drivers to this challenge were identified: the current large list of drinking water contaminants, the inevitable growth of that list as a result of analytical advances not matched by our ability to assess small, mostly immeasurable health risks, the lack of clarity on public expectations for safe drinking water, misunderstanding of new, small risks and a need to assure aesthetic quality. Promoting the means for achieving a common understanding of risk and uncertainty among water providers and regulators was identified as a priority objective. The project has been initiated by developing, in a Canadian drinking water context, working definitions for safe drinking water, risk and uncertainty, with appropriate illustrative examples. The limitations of sole reliance on compliance monitoring for numerical contaminant limits compared with the merits of a preventive risk management/water safety plan approach were elaborated. Based on the foundations adopted, a toolkit is being developed to assist with issues ranging from a risk hierarchy, various products to promote better understanding of how risk assessment is performed, and products to enhance communications with consumers about drinking water safety.

Winning the SDG battle in cities: how an integrated information ecosystem can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 sustainable development goals

“…Effective water management is an intensely knowledge‐based activity (Hrudy et al, ) involving two inter‐related activities: i) monitoring, assessment and management of water resources; and ii) the social and political work associated with policy development and implementation (Chukwuma, ; Booty et al, ). Complicating these activities is the fact that both factual and perceptual elements are associated with water quality.…”

“…Technological advances such as real‐time monitoring, artificial intelligence, space‐based environmental monitoring, predictive modelling, computer‐based optimization and simulation models offer opportunities for designing plans and developing policies to maximize the desired impacts and minimize the undesirable ones (Cosgrove & Loucks, ). Research supporting these efforts must be inter‐disciplinary and collaborative (Hrudy et al, ), combining the physical and natural sciences with social sciences (Booty et al, ; Cosgrove & Loucks, ) and enhancing the science‐policy interface (Quevauviller, ). This research will require new thinking and social research leading to new water management approaches and their political and social acceptance (Cosgrove & Loucks, ).…”

“…As a life-enabling resource, safe drinking water is an undeniable priority for sustainable cities (Polenghi-Gross et al, 2014). However, managing drinking water quality is a complex task fraught with a high degree of uncertainty (Hrudy et al, 2012). Among current challenges faced by cities are ageing water infrastructure, high maintenance costs, new contaminants, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, extensive information requirements and advanced analytical techniques, risks of systemic and accidental pollution of water sources and a lack of consensus on public expectations for 'safe' water (Chukwuma, 1998;Hrudy et al, 2012;Hou et al, 2013;Polenghi-Gross et al, 2014).…”

“…Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development Efforts to improve drinking water safety have focused primarily on local-scale technologies, with less attention given to systematic, integrative theories and practices for water quality monitoring and control (Hou et al, 2013). However, to achieve the SDG target of universally accessible drinking water, preventative approaches directed at understanding the system, its contaminant challenges, capabilities and limitations are needed (Hrudy et al, 2012). Two examples of this broader vision include the development of an early warning and control system for water quality in China (Hou et al, 2013) and the creation of frameworks for collaborative water quality knowledge and information networks in Europe (Dalcanale et al, 2011).…”

Applying the water safety plan to water reuse: towards a conceptual risk management framework

“…Both qualitative and quantitative assessment methods can be used to characterise risk. A typical technique is the semi-quantitative matrix that can be used to prioritise risks and vulnerabilities 21 108 describe the challenges in comparing health risks from inadequate disinfection with possible risks of cancer or adverse reproductive outcomes arising from disinfection by-products.…”