Development of a semi-quantitative risk based methodology to rank water industry assets to their need of monitoring in light of the impacts of climate change

Abstract

Over the course of this century water will become ever more critical to people and business. A growing world population and increasing living standards will drive inexorably rising demand for water, yet at the same time climate change means that our planet will likely to face an increase in both the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events. Water utility companies are starting to realise the importance of addressing the need of monitoring the impacts of climate change to their assets and ways to adapt. To date, there is no literature that shows a methodology in which water utility companies can effectively rank their assets in terms of their need of monitoring. This study is targeted to the water industry sector, and uses a semi-quantitative risk approach to assign vulnerability and criticality scores to assets in order to create a total risk score. The scores are presented through a risk matrix, which provides a guidance on assets that are most at risk. A various based sensitivity analysis was applied to the output, a risk tool, and shows that the final risk scores largely reflect the current literature review on how climate change impacts affect water industry assets.