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The highway construction industry constantly looks to increase productivity while public transportation agencies face challenges of shrinking budgets and staff numbers, even as the work continues to increase in size and demand. As a paradigm to maximize value and minimize waste with the resources available, Lean offers promise to enhance productivity, quality, and service. This study investigates the implementation of Lean by evaluating Lean conditions, practices, benefits, and challenges as expressed by U.S. and UK public transportation highway agencies as well as comparing the implementation of Lean between these agencies. Using a comprehensive literature review and formal interviews with six state departments of transportation along with Highways England from the UK, the findings show that Lean is intended to make process improvements to boost products and services to consumers. By creating a culture of continuous improvement, transportation agencies can improve their processes and increase their efficiencies and performance. Conversely, transportation agencies struggle to educate their employees and stakeholders in their understanding and practices of Lean, which causes confusion and ineffectiveness. Comparing the U.S. and UK transportation agencies, the approach to Lean implementation differs from a top-down approach for U.S. agencies to a bottom-up approach for Highways England. Furthermore, Highways England has an established tool for measuring Lean while development of quantifiable Lean measures is in its infancy in U.S. agencies. Overall, while the sample is limited, this exploratory study provides information for transportation agencies to use in consideration of implementing Lean.

President Joe Biden’s US$2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal in 2021 includes physical and social investments, but water systems would receive only about 5% of the total. Drinking water and wastew...

Although its investment needs lag the dominant transportation category, water infrastructure addresses human needs at a foundational level because it plays public health and economic roles. Much of it is old and not likely to be replaced soon, so federal policy must focus on intergovernmental leadership to sustain vital dams, urban water systems, and natural systems. Fixing the federal responsibility requires attention to intergovernmental relations and the conflicting goals of investment and regulation. Regulatory reform is ongoing, and normally not amenable to political initiatives. Federal water policies for both investment and regulatory controls seem to be on a flat trajectory, which is expected because they have evolved over decades. These can be summarized as: maintain federal dams and levees, invest in small grants and leveraging funds for state and local governments, address water justice issues, and operate essential programs like flood insurance. Public health and safety concerns will continue to dominate, more than in other infrastructure sectors. The future of water investments will be to hold the course with occasional shifts to respond to emergencies and new opportunities, such as greater private sector involvement.

By improving the operational capacity of utilities, smart water systems may enable utilities to improve access to water services and their affordability. Use of smart technologies is increasing in ...

In the United States, the national framework to address flood risk is the 50-year-old National Flood Insurance Program where the government bears the risk and private insurers handle customer policies. The program bundles insurance with flood mapping, floodplain management, and mitigation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Despite financial shortfalls and political controversy, evidence shows that public support is sufficient to continue and reform the program. Originally intended to transfer risk from taxpayers to insurance, the program recently required a taxpayer bailout after major hurricane-induced flood losses. Affordability of premiums is a major financial concern, even while premiums are forecast to rise. The flood mapping program is key to risk assessment, but it needs much improvement. The risk pool depends on compliance with floodplain resilience controls, which work better in riverine environments than in coastal zones. There is evidence of increased private sector interest in offering flood insurance. Politics raise questions about whether the needed reforms will succeed, but promising initiatives are to base premiums on risk, emphasize improvements in flood mapping, increase the involvement of private insurers in flood insurance, and increase responsibility of the state and local governments in flood risk resilience.

Drought is a complex natural hazard with its adverse multifaceted impacts cascading in every physical and human system. The vulnerability magnitude of various areas to drought mostly depends on their exposure to water deficiency, the existing water management policy framework and its implementation. The Standardized Drought Vulnerability Index (SDVI) is an integrated attempt towards characterizing drought vulnerability based on a comparative classification system, incorporating precipitation patterns, the supply and demand trends, and the socioeconomic background as the most crucial contributors to drought vulnerability. This work attempts to evolve the SDVI by presenting a more rigorous method of index parameters estimation and argues that the combination of in-situ and satellite data improve the index results in an effort to further minimize the paucity of drought related information. At the same time, it helps to surpass previous limitations in temporal and spatial propagation of the vulnerability concept. The new framework is applied in the South Platte Basin, within Colorado, on the 2012 summer drought (July-September). The proposed index modification may convey drought information in a more holistic manner to decision makers. SDVI could aid in advancing the understanding of each component contribution through in situ and remote sensing data integration and in avoiding existing practices of broken linkages and fragmentation of the reported impacts. Thus, it is believed that the SDVI could serve as an additional tool to guide decisions and target mitigation and adaptation actions, allowing for a more integrated management approach.

The legal concept of foreseeability is an important element of proof in flood loss litigation against the US Army Corps of Engineers. Although hydrologic forecasting and engineering uncerta...

Climate change and land development are causing more flood damage in the United States, which leads to more litigation. This is a rising concern to USACE, which owns many dams, levees, and ...

Under pressure from climate change and other drivers, the risks of water-related infectious and chronic diseases seem poised to increase. Addressing these risks requires shared work in the fields of public health and water resources management. To help in risk assessment, the paper presents a comprehensive conceptual model of water-related health effects and the potential barriers that can be established by water management actions. The model does not indicate unique solution strategies because multiple water management factors cause multiple types of water-related diseases. It uses the water-health nexus to conceptualize the pathways to diseases and help clarify health-related responsibilities for water management and public health officials. Experiences of the U.S. are presented as an exemplar of the links between water management and disease incidence. However, parts of the water management system are not regulated effectively and many countries lack organized utilities and effective water governance.

The provision of a safe and sustainable drinking water supply is one of the hallmarks of a successful society. Treated drinking water entering distribution systems in virtually all U.S. public drinking water systems meets regulations and is microbiologically safe. However, the opportunity for microbial contamination from decades to century old water distribution systems is increasing with time. Thus, increased health risk to consumers should be a driving factor in accelerating reinvestment in America’s aging water distribution water systems.

While more than half of the people in the world have access to piped water on premises, no global assessment has been made of the availability, safety, reliability and affordability of service leve...

Water infrastructure is multifaceted and essential to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Major categories include dams and hydropower, water supply and sanitation, and irrigation, wh...

Cities seeking to reform water management practices that degrade sustainability are challenged by limited resources, financial needs of legacy infrastructures, institutional barriers, and rigid regulatory environments. Stakeholders in urban water programs report that financial aspects of One Water top their list of concerns. As shown by local initiatives, integrated water management strategies based on the One Water concept can help to mitigate these problems and provide additional benefits and co-benefits. Experiences reported by cities identify practices that facilitate financial solutions to ongoing concerns. Drawing from three sets of One Water cases, 36 examples were shown to include significant financial innovation. Analysis of them pointed to strategies that involve organizational approaches, regional shared governance, partnerships, resource conservation, and corporate social responsibility. Financial innovation in each category requires further study to identify new opportunities and to validate feasibility, along with benefits and co-benefits.

Given the water-food-energy interconnections, integrated planning, policy and management using the nexus approach are required for the food production system. In this study the nexus and non-nexus approaches are compared to propose an optimal cropping patternthat considers water, energy and economic parameters. Linear optimization was applied to compare i) the nexus approach utilizing an objective function to maximize a water-food-energy nexus index and 2) the non-nexus approach utilizing three objective functions for water use, energy use, and agricultural net return. The study showed that the nexus approach is the best. Applying it through a water-food-energy nexus index provides a holistic method for identifying an optimal cropping pattern that reduces water and energy consumption and increases the agricultural net return.

This article illustrates a method for applying the water-food-energy nexus approach to propose an optimal cropping pattern. The proposed cropping pattern maximizes economic water and energy productivity and minimizes water and energy use. Through this method a water-food-energy nexus index is applied. A case study from Egypt is applied to illustrate the method.

Deficit irrigation, or the deliberate underirrigation of a crop, is a way to save farm water and allocate it to uses such as municipal, industrial, or agricultural expansion. Research on th...

Activists who oppose local government spending can defeat creative stormwater programs, often by using the slogan “rain tax” to convince the public that the financing plan is a tax increase...

Transfers of the right to use water can provide flexibility in regions where cities and farms compete for supplies. For example, the state of Colorado’s prior appropriation water law allows...

Successful management of water distribution systems will rise in importance as more people gain access to piped water globally. While much research about the management of these systems has...

Water, energy, and food are interrelated and critical resources for human well-being and environmental goals. Single-sector national strategies that focus on individual sectors of the nexus without considering their interconnections may lead to acute unanticipated consequences. In the present study, the system dynamic model platform was used to create a new approach to analysis of dynamic behaviour, focusing on joint water–energy–food interactions stemming from crop production and consumption at the national level under different scenarios and alternatives. The developed system determines: (i) water and energy footprints of crop production and consumption; (ii) virtual water and energy import and export; (iii) the national water and energy saving balance due to trade of agricultural commodities; and (iv) a water–food–energy nexus index. A case study from Egypt was used to test the system and illustrate some of its significance. The research illustrates the importance of considering the water–food–energy nexus when developing national strategies. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dual water systems are becoming an important urban water management strategy as more utilities adopt increasingly integrated approaches that enable matching source water quality to the inte...

As water resources are used for an array of societal purposes, a core set of institutions manages them through a water sector with connections to other societal sectors such as food, energy and health. A framework of the sector and its connectors is presented to develop definitions and order-of-magnitude estimates of expenditures for infrastructure, equipment and service delivery mechanisms. Examples are provided for the US to represent higher-income countries and for the general case of lower-income countries. Understanding water’s business aspects can identify opportunities to improve water efficiency and lower water footprints across the global range of contextual situations.

As a broad field, water resources management can have a blurry focus without a mechanism to coordinate the perspectives of its disciplines and sectors. If these can be harmonized, the result might be clearer explanations and improved outcomes. The paper probes whether identification of common problem archetypes can help to harmonize perspectives and improve education through more consistent treatment of recurring issues in case studies. An analysis of variables is presented to create a classification system to describe the architecture of water resources management problems, with emphasis on scale and management functions. The feasibility of using them is explored by an analysis of six sources of case studies, with a focus on those posted by the Global Water Partnership. From the analysis, it was evident that more emphasis was on policy and management than on technical tools. Most policy-level cases had a development focus and addressed multiple issues. Management–level cases addressed efficiency, productivity, reforms, and problem-solving. Technical discussions involved analysis methods partitioned by disciplines. The results show that cases can be identified primarily by management functions, with secondary classifiers such as scale, sectors, and number of authorities involved. A set of problem archetypes was assembled from the basic classification system and are available for educational experimentation to address cross-sector problems by explaining the big picture while keeping the field of analysis uncluttered. Their use is expected to be limited in the fragmented field of water resources management education due to the focus on disciplinary tools and most use may be capacity-building programs with a focus on problem-solving.

The misalignment of the boundaries of watersheds and jurisdictions is cited often as a barrier to effective water governance, but the validity of the assertion depends on watershed scale and the decisions or processes involved. The paper probes these decision processes and their alignment with scales of natural watersheds and with governance processes. Two examples from the USA provide context and data to inform the discussion, one from the humid eastern part and one from the drier western part. Ultimately, the spatial and governance scales determine the complexity of decisions. The major issue is the level and nature of negotiations and how stakeholders communicate and work with each other to resolve issues in a form of pragmatic federalism, where the concept merges into decentralization to the subwatershed level. At smaller scales, negotiations can be worked out in person-to-person venues but at larger scales institutions have their own trajectories and inertia. Ultimately, watershed boundaries can be effective for joint planning and assessment, but decisions follow governance patterns. Basin boundaries do provide venues for coordination mechanisms to mediate conflicts.

Highway construction efficiency is critical to highway users such as the trucking industry given today’s era of shortages in funding, and given the need for major re-investments in the highway system. One topic that can add to project costs relates to delays and how contractors are reimbursed for such delays. Delays are common in construction, especially in complex heavy highway and other infrastructure projects, and the claims they generate have negative effects on project schedules and costs. In spite of this, the analysis of claims is hindered due to the variety of methods and analysis techniques in use and lack of standardization in the incorporation of delay claim analysis methods in construction contracts. This paper reviews different methods for delay claim analysis and outlines their advantages and disadvantages. A case study of a bridge project is used to demonstrate the potential for manipulation by using different methods for the same delay case. The analysis shows clearly that a standardized process for delay claim analysis would improve highway construction contracting. Research needs to create a standardized process are outlined.

Investigating causes of water main failures can help utilities reduce their frequency and save on lifecycle costs, but procedures are not well established in most utilities. A process to tr...

In addition to infrastructure and regulatory controls, safe drinking water systems require effective institutional arrangements and governance to sustain services and guard against failures...

Concerns about aging infrastructure, pressure on water supplies, and increasingly stringent wastewater discharge regulations have led water providers to consider new and innovative approaches. One such approach involves the distribution of reclaimed water through a dual distribution system in which the piping is separated into two separate and independent networks. One network is used exclusively for potable water, the other for non-potable water. This paper summarizes the results of a recently completed study sponsored by the Water Research Foundation in which a retrospective assessment of the performance of existing dual water systems was performed. Criteria for the performance assessment were established through an extensive literature review, the development of 37 case studies, site visits, feedback from workshop participants, and the creation of a classification framework that enables comparisons among similar dual systems. The study concluded that the primary motivators in using dual systems are to extend water supplies and provide more options for wastewater management. While dual systems can provide benefits such as extending the lives of existing potable water systems and deducing risk from drought, there are many issues such as storage for non-potable supplies, rate-setting, and true costs accounting that remain to be resolved.

Drought is a complex natural phenomenon that lacks a universally accepted definition, thus it is difficult to confront holistically. Several efforts have been made towards managing the widespread and catastrophic drought impacts. In this quest, the concept of vulnerability to drought seems to offer some significant potential. In the present attempt, a standardized drought vulnerability index (SDVI) is presented, applied, and spatially visualized through geostatistical methods on a country scale. Greece, experiencing frequent and intense droughts, was selected as the study site. In an effort to link drought characteristics to impacts, the index incorporates water supply information, demand data, the state of the relevant water infrastructure and climatic parameters represented by the standardized precipitation index. The index showed potential in portraying various vulnerability states and followed satisfactorily the vulnerability fluctuations in Greece in relation to recorded drought hazard dimensions and impacts. The SDVI may be considered as a first step for the emergence of an integrated SDVI with multi-scalar applications in environmental research and decision-making. It is believed that improving techniques in index formulation may complement more reasonable and acceptable solutions to water challenges posed by droughts and help avoid a drifting sense of continuous ‘water crises’.

The concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM) has stimulated a productive international dialogue, but is criticized as being ambiguous or a tool of the establishment and unresponsive to important needs. However, its broad scope actually enables it to provide a common language, facilitate policy discussions, catalogue management practices, and support education and capacity building. Similar criticisms can be levelled at integrated paradigms in other sectors, and even the process of water management itself. IWRM faces challenges because water policy is often subordinated to policies of other sectors and because of the unique attributes of water.

The record-setting 2011–2012 drought was the worst in the central regions of the United States since the 1930s. Short-term impacts included crop failures, job losses, water shortages, energy impacts, navigation problems and environmental losses. The event reinforced the need for water security and preparedness through */collective actions for mitigation and response. It showed that innovations in water management can improve resilience but cannot mitigate all risks; comprehensive water-management and emergency-preparedness solutions are needed, based on effective collaboration between institutions. The main lesson of this complex and significant drought is about the need to strengthen intergovernmental cooperation and policy responses.

According to the ASCE (2012), the United States earns an overall grade of D on its infrastructure and faces a funding shortfall of approximately $1.18 trillion over 5 years, or $236 billion per year. However, even in response to the deep crisis of 2009, only approximately $141 billion of $819 billion in one-time stimulus funds was committed to infrastructure (Yourish 2009). Why is it that the United States has such urgent infrastructure needs, but more funding is not provided even with opportunities such as the massive 2009 stimulus program? What are the implications for making the case for infrastructure investments and for engineering education? This paper addresses those questions by reviewing evolving practices in infrastructure stimulus and job programs and analyzing the problem of underinvestment in them during recessions and average economic conditions. The discussion includes a brief review of infrastructure stimulus programs during the Great Depression, which were then called public works spending and pioneered Keynesian tools to stimulate economic activity and create jobs. The central proposition offered is that emphasis today on infrastructure stimulus spending is lower than in the past because of greater complexity in the economy, more available fiscal and monetary tools, more government decentralization, and more diverse infrastructure types. The diminished level of infrastructure investment is then examined in an analysis of the effectiveness of education in preparing engineers to make the case for higher levels of infrastructure investment.

The discipline of water management offers important tools for solving important human and environmental problems, but its many diverse scenarios defy classification and lead to abstract treatment of problem types by different disciplines. The resulting generalized approaches to education may seem detached from reality or to lack academic rigor. Case studies offer a bridge between abstraction and specific approaches by providing context to the discussion of management principles. Changes in the use of case studies for water management education over the last two decades are reviewed to show how they address multiple scales and issues. Although cases are proliferating, their diversity and lack of standards inhibit their use for instruction in water management, which is itself a scattered discipline without consensus standards. Many cases are simply descriptions of dilemmas, situations, and ongoing projects of interest to the case writers. Most sources are not impartial but advocate specific agendas....

Water resources and services are parts of social systems that extend beyond the technical world and the IWRM requires a balance between competing views of social and political issues. Social issues are not well defined, but they create many connections between people and water. A starting point to define them is the hierarchy of human needs, where access to water and services is about social justice. Although access seems to be a human right, paying for services is also essential. Empowering women is also high on the global water agenda. It is difficult to harmonize differing worldviews about social issues, but IWRM offers a forum for it, especially with its focus on collective action.

Hydrologic information is needed for an effective and fair approach to measuring water availability and probing the nature of problems and conflicts. It provides data on the water cycle from atmospheric water through downstream phenomena and groundwater systems. Watersheds are nature’s production units for water supplies, and as coupled natural–human systems, they are logical accounting units for hydrologic analysis. Watersheds and river basins can be classified by scale as geohydrologic units. Accounting is sometimes by a political unit. Using the hydrologic balance, the yield of water sources is a metric of sustainable supplies from streams or aquifers. A protected watershed can provide pure water, but few are in pristine condition. Ecologic systems vary from small to global and provide essential ecosystem services for provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural benefits.

Sustainable water resources management requires extensive infrastructure systems which are normally capital intensive, expensive, and long-lasting. Careful decisions about them are a central task for water managers. The systems divert water, convey it, treat it, and return it to nature. Sustainability requires that they achieve this without excessive impacts on natural systems. The components of infrastructure systems include structures, sensors, controls, and hydraulic equipment to serve water-handling functions for conveyance, storage, treatment, energy conversion, and control. Each category of water infrastructure and equipment has a distinct function, but how the functions are provided differs among types of systems for water supply, wastewater, stormwater, flood control, irrigation, and instream water management.

To support water governance, IWRM requires an effective legal and regulatory framework and water managers should understand how laws constrain their actions. The framework is embedded in institutional arrangements to include law and order, a functioning government, effective policy and mechanisms, and a culture that promotes a successful society. Water law evolved in different regions in different ways from early precedents that became common law about issues such as sharing of water supplies. It means the collection of rules and guidelines that control behavior and are enforced through social institutions. The general categories of water law are for allocation, management, development, and protection. Laws are specific for each country and differ in detail but not in their main goals.

Economics and decision sciences are used in IWRM for analysis and to create management instruments for control of water uses. Most applications of economics in IWRM are in the planning and analysis modes. Examples of core economic concepts include the differences between public and private goods and the valuation of benefits. Decisions require comparison of the merits of alternatives, which is a core concept in decision science with application of benefit-cost analysis and multicriteria decision analysis. Social and environmental impact assessments are also required for sustainability analysis in the decision process. Examples of important economic instruments include pollution charges, water markets and tradable permits, subsidies, and payment for environmental services.

Managing demands for water, water-related services, and ecosystem services can convert unlimited requests for resources to ones that consider resource limits. Urban water demand involves an aggregate of domestic, commercial, and industrial demands, and auditing of water uses in cities offers a tool to improve efficiency. Many industries supply their own water and are not connected to utility networks. Irrigation is by far the largest water use on the basis of consumptive use, especially in dry regions. Demands for instream flows are satisfied after withdrawals, discharges, and losses occur, and the health of instream flows is an indicator of the success of IWRM. Demand for sanitation services and wastewater management is mostly inelastic because people have few alternatives. Flood control services do not involve water demand but the use of water facilities, which could be used to increase water yield.

Water conflicts are pervasive, and water managers require effective training and tools to help resolve them. Most scenarios of IWRM involve a spectrum of planning and coordination where conflict management is required when disputes interrupt orderly processes. Tools include shared vision planning as well as consensus building, mediation, and negotiation. Many types of conflicts can occur. Best known among these are transboundary conflicts, which arise when water flows from one political jurisdiction to another. Closely related are conflicts over interbasin transfers, which provide water by transferring it from areas of apparent abundance. The root issue in water conflicts is to mobilize effective collective action. Ideally, voluntary approaches should be used, but without a crisis or regulatory hammer, people may not choose them.