Name

OFWAT's asset investment 25 years’ best practice: addressing its missing information challenges through systems analytics

Speakers

Dr Stephen Palmer

Authors

Stephen Palmer and Caroline Samberger, Stantec, UK

Description

In April 2022, OFWAT produced its best practice guidance for UK water utility strategic asset investment planning over a 25-year period. 

The guidance requires development of adaptive pathways subject to regret analysis scenario testing for four mandatory criteria (climate change, technology, demand and abstraction reduction) plus a discretionary ‘wider scenario’. This approach offers water utilities a route to lower risk, more efficient investment but also requires significant information gaps to be filled. 

Missing information includes risks to existing treatment capability arising from priority chemicals and CSO closures and identifying and managing how TOTEX incentivisation and increasing water and wastewater quality has reduced asset headroom. Robust regret analysis requires mapping the best practice risk scenarios onto global and national  risk drivers. The contextual risk information needed includes understanding what drives economy of scale in water industry assets, understanding how the global economy climate adaptation cost falls disproportionately on the water sector and understanding how resources, pollution, population are likely to interact globally to affect the U.K. from now to 2050. 

This paper shows how and why systems analytics are needed to meet these challenges and includes examples of how such a tool can deliver the promise inherent in OFWAT’s 2022 best practice.

Time

4:15 PM - 4:40 PM

Location Name

Room 2

Track

14:55 - 17:30 Changing Perspectives