About SWITCH: The SWITCH Approach

The SWITCH approach to Urban Water Management is aimed at solving the challenge of water management in the city of the future.
The approach consists of the following elements:
- An inventory of the major global change pressures that affect the state of urban water systems
- An overview of the strategic issues that urban water managers are confronted with now and in the next decades; and the concrete strategic questions that need an answer
- A description of the potential of strategic planning for urban water management under changing conditions and uncertainty
- A strategic planning approach based on a Learning Alliance process and directed at creative visioning, scenario identification and strategy development
- A method to implement strategic urban water management plans via the government and non-government sectors
- Recommendations to use a monitoring system of sustainability indicators to measure the state of the urban water system, the results of which are to be used in a next cycle of strategic planning
- Recommendations to use a decision support tool (SWITCH City Water) to evaluate the effect of various strategies and options on overall system sustainability, before implementation of these strategies and options
- Recommendations on the application of a number of innovative (technological) options in future urban water management schemes