Infrastructure Management Reflections on Water Crises as Top Global Risk

Water Crisis is the Top Global Risk says the Word Economic Forum in its updated 2015 Global Risk  Assessment.

The assessment has also changed the grouping of Water Crisis from an environmental risk to social risk, providing much wider implications to the risk.

Brett Walton of Circle of Blue provides a good background article on this updated World Economic Forum assessment.

This assessment will have an impact on the global infrastructure asset management community.

It means that high-level policymakers and politicians will pay more attention to the risks and impacts surrounding the water crisis and look for ways to manage and mitigate this.

In many cases, this will involve investment in and construction of new infrastructure.  The United States, China, and India are all going to have to make significant and sustained investments in new water infrastructure in the next decade.

Infrastructure asset management practitioners in the areas where this investment is likely to occur need to be prepared for this investment, to ensure that it integrates with existing infrastructure networks and service provision and that the optimal infrastructure is procured.

Basic infrastructure management questions will need to be assessed and answered such as:

• What services and service levels are required?
• What is the future demand for this water?
• What growth in demand is expected – municipal, agricultural, intensification of use and demand?
• What is water availability?
• What are the risks associated with this infrastructure?
• What is the affordability of this infrastructure?

With this predicted level of activity and investment, there are some interesting challenges ahead for our profession.

Don’t forget – most of your infrastructure lifecycle management costs are locked in at the completion of construction – so building the right infrastructure, to the right capacity, at the appropriate standard is vitally important to your long term management.

PHOTO CREDIT: USDA photo by Cynthia Mendoza via Creative Commons License Flickr. The photo was resized to fit the website’s needs.