Water & Wastewater Asia September/October 2018

44 | INSIGHT
Making waves in sustainability
and digitalisation
Arcadis recently launched its latest drone deployment services in construction and is one of the first companies to do so in
Singapore. As a leading global design and consultancy firm for natural and built assets with deep market sector insights,
we are excited to hear what Arcadis’s Global Cities Director, John Batten and Global Leader, Intelligent Water Networks,
Giles Booth have to say about urban sustainability challenges and Arcadis’ digitalisation journey at this point in time.
Q: Arcadis has been providing
solutions for all kinds of urban
environmental and sustainability
problems, can you point to three
main sustainability challenges in
the water industry that countries
worldwide should give priority
to?
JB: The first has to be water quality.
With urbanisation, industrial migration
and others factors in play, contamination
is always affecting receiving water and
ground water. If you look at PFAs, the
emerging contaminant issue, then you
have challenges of quality even at drinking
water level. Water quality continues to be
a challenge and will remain a challenge
as we have more and more emerging
contaminants like PFAs.
The challenge of water quality is
particularly prominent in China, where
major cities have undergone rapid
urbanisation since the country opened its
economy in 1978. The state has recently
identified 21 cities failing to meet the
target of improving the quality of “black
and smelly” water bodies, and that the
country will need US$147 billion to clean
its urban rivers. As evidenced by the case
of China, water quality will not only affect
the health and well-being of its residents
and environment, but also have economic
consequences.
The second issue is resilience. That means
the ability of a city to respond to disruptive
water events like scarcity, floods and
droughts. A city now must have the ability
to live with such fluctuations and events in
water because of climate change, changing
water patterns, sea level rise and political
changes, which are all very real problems
and very much in play. Among the largest
resilience programmes is the sponge city
initiative in China. Sponge city is an innovation
solution to create more green public spaces
to absorb storm water, making the city more
permeable and resilient. Wuhan, the most
populous city in Central China, is one of the
programme’s 16 pilot cities and Arcadis is
honoured to be appointed as the principal
consultant by the Wuhan Water Authority for
the city’s programme.
The third is the area of system efficiency in
asset management. In water networks, the
amount of leakage can be significant so the
stability aspect of leakage has a lot to do with
the system too. In water networks, particularly
older ones, the amount of leakages can be
significant, resulting in revenue losses to water
utility. Non-revenue water is something to be
tackled as it leads to a lot of wastage, and
when you consider people who are without
water supply while we are losing that amount
of water from our network, it just doesn’t make
sense. Managing water leakage and driving
down non-revenue water is therefore an
imperative for cities, especially ones dealing
with water scarcity. Singapore’s PUB is a
good example of a city utility that is investing
significantly in tightening up its distribution
system in preventing leakages and breakages.
Q: With governments taking the
lead to seek solutions to manage
such challenges, what can the
private sector in water industries
in Asia do to tackle sustainability
issues?
JB: You have the Dow Jones sustainability
index, which is your corporate social
responsibility from an environmental view,
tracking the stock performance of the world’s
leading companies in terms of economic,
environmental and social criteria. More
investors are now paying attention, as there
are growing expectations from shareholders
for companies to be more environmentally
sensitive and responsible, so that trend is the
global trend.
Q: In some developing countries,
the priority is to solve more
immediate water problems such
as water supply and drinking water
quality, not sustainability. Is it
possible to still bring sustainability
issues to their table?
JB: Sustainability does come at a cost. When
you do the cost benefit analysis, I think that
sustainability, in the long run, is a good
investment because it improves quality of
life to make a city a better place to live in.
Liveability is a big issue in Asia, investing
in sustainability and liveability is a priority
on both public and private sector level.
The two definitely should join up and work
together to create sustainable outcomes.
By prioritising urban sustainability, a city’s
water environment directly benefits from that
investment.
Q: Are there any challenges
implementing it in SEA?
Water & Wastewater Asia • September / October 2018