Building a Climate-Resilient City: Water supply and sanitation systems

This policy brief outlines best practices for enhancing the resilience of urban water supply and sanitation systems against climate shocks, emphasizing a combination of infrastructure robustness, redundancy, and decentralized options.

• Building resilience in water supply systems requires the use of "multi-barrier" methods to strengthen all infrastructure components, with a policy priority placed on redundancy and the flexibility to switch between groundwater and surface water options.
• Resilience can be improved through the implementation of highly decentralized water supply and sanitation options that complement centralized systems, as well as through green infrastructure for stormwater management and water conservation.
• The brief identifies three core principles for municipal adaptation planning to build climate resilience: robustness (strong design), redundancy (fail-safe networks with extra capacity), and resourcefulness (citizen empowerment).

APA

Venema,, J. T. D. (2017). Building a Climate-Resilient City: Water supply and sanitation systems. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/publications/brief/building-climate-resilient-city-water-supply-and-sanitation-systems

Chicago

Venema,, Jennifer Temmer,Henry David. Building a Climate-Resilient City: Water supply and sanitation systems. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2017. https://www.iisd.org/publications/brief/building-climate-resilient-city-water-supply-and-sanitation-systems.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Venema, |first1=Jennifer Temmer,Henry David |title=Building a Climate-Resilient City: Water supply and sanitation systems |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=24 April 2017 |url=https://www.iisd.org/publications/brief/building-climate-resilient-city-water-supply-and-sanitation-systems |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{venema2017building, author = {Venema,, Jennifer Temmer,Henry David}, title = {{Building a Climate-Resilient City: Water supply and sanitation systems}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2017}, month = apr, url = {https://www.iisd.org/publications/brief/building-climate-resilient-city-water-supply-and-sanitation-systems}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }