Urban Water Infrastructure Management

There are many criteria involved in an urban storm-water management
system. Among which environmental issues, technical limitations, constructional
constraints, legal matters, urban landscape, traffic control related subjects, safety
concerns, social problems, and economics can be mentioned. Interaction of complex
parameters and the difficulty to duly quantification of such criteria in an urban
environment has often obscured the usage of analytical methods to make the best choice
or provide a ranking for the decision makers. In this research, a systematic and
structured hybrid multi criteria decision making approach for the selection of
construction method in urban storm-water collection systems is proposed. The approach
combines analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and compromise programming (CP). This
combination reduces the tedious and time consuming process of pair-wise comparisons
needed for conventional AHP, which makes it a more desirable approach for decision
makers. The proposed method is effectively applied to a real case study in the city of
Tehran. It is shown that the method is capable of handling a vast class of problems in
water resources and construction management.

At a time when flows of both water and finances were severely curtailed, this article explores the public and private adaptation actions which played out during Cape Town’s drought which produced a ‘shock within a shock’ on the municipality’s budget (2016–2018), this article provides a detailed and embedded account of the severity, urgency and complexity of the challenges that decision makers are faced with during such unanticipated events. Shifts in approaches are identified and traced through budget allocations to display uncharted governance arrangements which, although stabilising, present novel finance and governance challenges amidst altered resource and operating conditions. Reflecting on observed shifts and shock to the municipal budget, the article highlights the challenge of an uncoordinated response between public and private actors that aim to secure high-reliability service delivery. Reflecting on the findings, recommendations outline resilience qualities necessary to m...