SWITCH Introduction

The overall goal of the SWITCH project is to catalyse change towards more sustainable urban water management in the “City of the Future”. 

Context

With increasing global change pressures, and existing limitations and un-sustainability factors and risks inherent to conventional urban water management (UWM), cities will experience difficulties in efficiently managing scarcer and less reliable water resources, as well as satisfying water uses/services and waste water disposal, without creating environmental, social and/or economic damage. In order to meet these challenges,SWITCH calls for a paradigm shift in UWM. There is a need to convert ad-hoc actions(problem/incident driven) into a coherent and consolidated approach (sustainability driven). This need drives the adoption of an integrated project (IP) approach for SWITCH. 

Research concept

SWITCH proposes an action research project, which has as its main objective: “The development, application and demonstration of a range of tested scientific, technological and socio-economic solutions and approaches that contribute to the achievement of sustainable and effective UWM schemes in ‘The City of the future’”.The project will be implemented by different combinations of consortium partners, along the lines of seven complementary and interactive themes. The research approach is innovative for the combination of:

• action research: address problems through innovation based upon involvement of users.
• learning alliances: to link up stakeholders to interact productively and to create win-win solutions along the water chain;
• multiple-way learning: European cities learn from each other and from developing countries, and vice versa.
• multiple-level or integrated approach: to consider the urban water system, and its components, (city level) in relation to its impacts on, and dependency on, the natural environment in the river basin (river basin level), and in relation to Global Change pressures (global level).

Overall goal and mission

The SWITCH Integrated Project aims at the development, application and demonstration of a range of tested scientific, technological and socio-economic solutions and approaches that contribute to the achievement of sustainable and effective urban water management (UWM) schemes in ‘The City of the future’ (projection 30-50 years from now). The approach will be to develop efficient and interactive urban water systems and services (city level) in the context of the city’s geographical and ecological setting (river basin level), which are robust, flexible and adjustable to a range of global change pressures (global level).In order to achieve this, SWITCH will:1. Develop an overall, flexible, strategic approach towards sustainable UWM, which builds on a thorough understanding of limitations, and un-sustainability factors and risks inherent in conventional UWM systems and schemes under current and future global change pressures. The SWITCH Strategic Approach will provide criteria and guiding principles to convert current ad-hoc UWM practices (problem/incident driven) into a coherent and consolidated approach (sustainability driven);2. Create scientific knowledge, with the above strategic approach as a guide, which will be used to generate technological and socio-economic innovation in UWM schemes or components thereof, with a view to providing high (water) service levels for all, in balance with nature (ecologically sound), and robust and flexible in terms of global change pressures;3. Link-up the key experts on urban water, from Europe and from developing countries, and pool scientific, technological and financial resources from partners and in the field (Demo-cities), through an integrated multidisciplinary research effort. The outcomes of the research programme, which will be implemented via so-called Learning Alliances, will complement other major research programmes on urban water services, on integrated water resources management and on Water and Climate.The project contributes positively to Millennium Development Goals 4 and 7¹, and is expected to have a wide global impact on the feasibility of sustainable, integrated UWM schemes. The demonstration projects should not be seen as partial ‘coverage’, but rather as learning instruments. An important indicator for the success of the project is that the developed and tested solutions have been accepted and incorporated in policy and strategy frameworks. 1 At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the Member States of the United Nations (UN) reaffirmed their commitment to working toward a world in which sustaining development and eliminating poverty would have the highest priority. From agreements and resolutions of this summit (e.g.), the so-called ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) were born. MDG 4 refers to the reduction of child mortality and MDG 7 refers to ensuring environmental sustainability.