Executive Summary:This report describes the outcomes from a wide ranging review of the scientific literature and current industry views and activities relating to sustainable urban water systems. The intent of this review is to not only summarise the current state of scientific literature and industry initiatives relating to this topic, but also to identify any particular directions which this debate is taking and the implications for the development of future water systems. Because of the large amount of literature written on this subject, the report is divided into two parts. Much of the detail of the literature review is contained in an appendix written by Greg Laves from Griffith University. The main part of the report builds on this literature review and describes the construction and use of analytical frameworks and associated sets of indicators proposed to assess sustainability. It also looks at Australian experience in implementing some of these methodologies and goes on to consider the principles and actions proposed as part of the Cities of the Future initiative.The review clearly identifies the many complex factors involved in assessing sustainability and the challenges which this finding sets for the water industry. Despite these difficulties, the water industry has made significant efforts to incorporate sustainability principles into system planning, but has often reached a situation where pragmatic decisions have to be made under a degree of uncertainty. As a consequence of these difficulties, the water industry has used a variety of approaches to avoid so-called “paralysis by analysis”. For example, one approach is to focus analytical effort on the areas with the biggest potential for improving sustainability such as net water usage, carbon footprint and nutrient discharges.This debate has been widened to include the concept of sustainable Cities of the Future in which it is recognised that water systems are only one part of the total urban system and that opportunities exist to optimise water system planning within this wider context. While significant work has been done to identify sets of principles and actions required to implement this approach, difficulties in successfully integrating all of the issues surrounding sustainability will continue to frustrate.This report suggests that a research gap in achieving more sustainable cities relates directly to the use and availability of physical resources. It is argued that, by obtaining a clear scientific understanding of the factors impacting on the availability and efficient use of physical resources, common ground will be found from which all parties involved in urban planning (including those in the social and organisational realms) can move forward.The concept of ‘urban metabolism’ has been put forward as one way of pursuing this goal. However, this report also concludes that quantifying an urban metabolism model will only provide answers directly related to resource use efficiency and that other tools will still be required to answer questions related to factors such as cost, resilience and risk.The report concludes with some recommendations for future work, which will not only explore the potential use of ‘urban metabolism’ models, but also assess their integration with other analytical tools relating to system resilience, risk and cost.
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