Friday, March 21, 2025
In the face of unprecedented changes, Canadian water utilities are challenged to plan effectively for an inherently unpredictable future. Canadian Water Network (CWN) is leading a national adaptive planning project to help prepare utilities for a range of future risks. This project is supported by Natural Resources Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Program.
While conventional planning approaches address some uncertainty, they lack the flexibility needed for cost-effective adjustments as conditions change over time. Plans that fail to effectively predict future conditions increase infrastructure investment risks and make achieving resiliency more difficult. Adaptive planning breaks actions into key decision points over the long term, providing decision-makers with greater insight into which investments to make and when.
“Building resiliency and safeguarding communities and infrastructure from inherently unpredictable climate impacts is a priority for water utilities,” said Nicola Crawhall, Chief Executive Officer of CWN. “With support from NRCan, we are supporting water leaders in developing adaptive planning pathways to prepare for a range of future risks.”
In recent years, adaptive planning has emerged as the preferred approach to decision-making to address future uncertainties, with leading jurisdictions in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Asia putting it into practice. CWN’s adaptive planning project, which runs until the end of 2026, will draw on international best practices from these and other jurisdictions to create usable guidance and resources for Canadian water utilities and water management professionals.
According to Alicia Fraser, General Manager, Integrated Water Services, Capital Regional District (Victoria, BC), “The value of adaptive planning for Canadian water utilities is in understanding future risk and building that uncertainty into a decision-making framework that allows for greater confidence in our ongoing infrastructure investments.”
