Regenerative asset management: Fast-tracking sustainable and resilient community outcomes
At a glance
As climate and weather extremes continue to rise, disruption and financial losses from disasters are projected to escalate, impacting new and existing social infrastructure. Our communities sit on the front lines of the climate crisis, and are also challenged with driving sustainability, adaptation and resilience planning. With local governments and municipalities known for being the doers and enabling change, how can data-informed decision-making tools be applied to future-proof infrastructure assets?Proactive climate adaptation
Governments’ policies are increasingly supporting a more proactive approach through adaptation and community resilience projects. Reactive efforts in building back efforts rely heavily on spiralling disaster recovery spending. In Canada, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities announced more than half a billion dollars has been made available to help municipalities adapt to climate change. The USA is offering federal funding and technical assistance programs for climate adaptation on a case-by-case basis.
The world over, communities sit on the battlegrounds of climate change with extreme heat, hurricanes, storms, fires and floods threatening the health, safety and livelihoods of individuals and communities. Municipalities need to be embedding sustainability and resilience principles into infrastructure asset management thinking and approaches.
Local governments are currently adopting regenerative asset management to become more resilient by shifting from a reactive approach of dealing with disasters and crisis as they happen, to a more proactive position that anticipates and considers these scenarios as part of planning. As an extension of this, a growing list of forward-thinking municipalities are incorporating regenerative concepts and considering how the management of assets can help achieve more sustainable service outcomes.
Shifting the focus to maximise sustainable benefits, reduce risks and drive resiliency
A major Toronto municipality recently developed a Levels of Service (LoS) framework for the city’s stormwater service areas. With climate change threatening the possibilities of flooded neighbourhoods and streets resembling rivers, LoS frameworks need to shift beyond compliance-based delivery metrics and meeting provincial regulation. Applying Future Communities thinking allows the discussion to shift from a service-led outcome to a one that puts residents and resiliency at the centre. Having a conversation around regenerative asset management facilitated alternative approaches that addresses adaptive planning, future capacity building and service delivery methods.
In this example, using a regenerative asset management lens means utilising census and operational performance data and spatial information to identify vulnerable communities in assessing the resiliency of a stormwater network. Data is analysed through three evaluation considerations: social, environmental and operational. This information becomes integrated to form a composite lens providing a spatial representation of priority decision areas for service outcomes, and planning and infrastructure lifecycle management. The result of this approach is the city’s stormwater service area that can now also document and demonstrate how its service outcomes align with its vision and sustainability goals.
Laying the pathway for future-proof, community-centric outcomes
In a smaller municipality further north of Toronto another regenerative asset management project is underway, this time modelling Future Service Optimisation (FSO) scenarios for service outcomes. Identifying drivers and constraints on the service outcomes, service standards and service investment are being modelled as part of an exercise that will help the community to optimise future services. The FSO modelling process is enabling the team to identify three plausible service frameworks projecting ten years from the current baseline. This approach considers investment affordability versus more sustainability-centric service quality/standards models. The evaluation is critical for laying the roadmap to manage, protect and value infrastructure assets to support sustainable, resilient service delivery.
To learn more about GHD Advisory’s Regenerative Asset Management model and how concepts can help your clients please reach out to our North American Asset Management leads Jeff Matthews and Glen Edwards in Canada, and Wayne Francisco in the USA.