B.s. Mcintosh

Cities are increasingly depending on energy-intensive water sources, such as distant rivers and the ocean, to meet their water demand. However, such expensive sources could be avoided using alternative local sources of water such as wastewater, rainwater, and stormwater. Many cities do not have robust accounts of those localized water resources, as...

Urbanisation causes a range of adverse impacts on stream physical and ecological conditions due to increases in catchment runoff caused by increased imperviousness. Developing ways to reduce these impacts on in-stream ecosystems is a major challenge and requires innovative catchment specific, high-time-resolution modelling methods. We employed a co...

Conceptual modelling is used in many fields with a varying degree of formality. In environmental applications, conceptual models are used to express relationships, explore and test ideas, check inference and causality, identify knowledge and data gaps, synchronize mental models and build consensus, and to highlight key or dominant processes. Due to...

Sharing knowledge between water professionals is crucial to tackling complex water management issues across the globe. Connecting professions across a range of water related disciplines not only facilitates knowledge sharing but also promotes leadership, innovation, collaboration and professional development.

Addressing complex water management issues across the globe is a difficult task and with increasing water scarcity this task is likely to become even more challenging into the future. Knowledge plays a crucial role in ensuring, as far as possible, the best management outcomes to these water challenges. The International WaterCentre Alumni Network (...

Innovations in technology and organisations are central to enabling the water sector to adapt to major environmental changes such as climate change, land degradation or drinking water pollution. While there are literatures on innovation as a process and on the factors that influence it, there is little research that integrates these. Development of...

The complexity of natural resource use processes and dynamics is now well accepted and described in theories ranging across the sciences from ecology to economics. Based upon these theories, management frameworks have been developed within the research community to cope with complexity and improve natural resource management outcomes. Two notable f...

In developed and development contexts, change is an increasingly central theme for water professionals. Growing populations, rapid urbanization and increasing demands for water, food and energy, are set against a backdrop of changing rainfall patterns and emerging trade-offs between the water required for water supply, energy provision, food produc...

The treatment of agriculturally polluted water to potable standards is costly for water companies. Changes in agricultural practice can reduce these costs while also meeting the objectives of European Union (EU) environmental legislation. In this paper, the uptake of source control interventions (SCIs) by water and sewage companies in England and W...

As we progress into the 21st century, change is an increasingly central theme for water professionals and for professionals in sectors where water plays a central role. Building the capacity of professionals in water and closely related sectors to lead such change will be an essential component of the response to global water challenges this centur...

Increases in the impervious area due to urbanisation have been shown to have negative impacts on the physical and ecological condition of streams, primarily through increased volume and frequency of runoff. The harvesting and detention of runoff has a potential to decrease this impact. This paper describes the effects of urbanisation on catchment f...

This paper presents an assessment of how the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is stimulating change in water and wastewater management. The paper aims to provide an organisational innovation contribution towards understanding the processes by which policy and legislation stimulate change in water and wastewater systems. Results were produce...

Improving the stimulation and management of innovation by water utilities is a key mechanism through which the challenges of securing sustainable water and wastewater services will be achieved. This paper describes the process of adopting source control interventions (SCIs) by water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) in England and Wales. SCIs can be d...

Despite the perceived value of DSS in informing environmental and natural resource management, DSS tools often fail to be adopted by intended end users. By drawing together the experience of a global group of EDSS developers, we have identified and assessed key challenges in EDSS development and offer recommendations to resolve them. Challenges rel...

Arguments for the potential benefits that environmental decision and information support tools (DISTs) bring to managing complex environmental issues like desertification are well rehearsed. However our empirical understanding of the reasons why particular DISTs are or are not used by different policy and management organisations, and the impacts t...

The intention of this paper it to open up debate within the environmental modelling and software (EMS) community on how best to respond to the increasing desire to evaluate the success of EMS projects in terms of outcomes rather than outputs. Outcomes ...

The challenges associated with evaluating the effectiveness of environmental decision support systems (EDSS) based on the perceptions of only a small sample of end-users are well understood. Although methods adopted from Management Information Systems (MISs) evaluation research have benefited from relatively large (100+) sample sizes, permitting th...

As noted in the introduction, our ambition with this special issue has been to promote critical discussion regarding the present state of (co) evolutionary approaches to sustainable development. This concluding essay seeks to incorporate the substantive content of the preceding papers within such a wider debate. The contributions presented in this...

Using the example of raw water quality this paper examines the relationship between different spatial characteristics (geographical and physical properties) of Water and Sewerage Companies (WaSCs) supply and sewage areas and response to the Water Framework Directive. Results were obtained from thematic analysis and content analysis of 14 interviews...

Changes in population distribution across Europe are driving the construction of substantial numbers of new houses, creating a need to forecast water demand for new housing developments. The most certain information available on new households during planning are the physical characteristics of the properties themselves. This paper sets out to esta...

The potential usefulness of different kinds of Information System (IS) for environmental management is well recognised. However, concerns have been raised about the translation of this potential into actual use and benefit to policy and planning organisations and outcomes. The aims of this paper are to identify those factors which have been found t...

Integrated assessment models, decision support systems (DSS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are examples of a growing number of computer-based tools designed to provide decision and information support to people engaged in formulating and implementing environmental policy and management. It is recognised that environmental policy and mana...

Sound decisions in environmental policy and management usually require the examination of alternative solutions, and may require the consideration of alternative problem fornlulations prior to option assessment. Constructing and considering the consequences of alternative problems (variables and relations) and policy options (norms and standards) i...

The complexity of natural resource use processes and dynamics is now well accepted and described in theories ranging across the sciences from ecology to economics. Based upon these theories, management frameworks have been developed within the research community to cope with complexity and improve natural resource management outcomes. Two notable f...

The conservation and future sustainability of vulnerable fluvio-coastal environments, along with the need for viable planning criteria and policy instruments for their long-term management, are some of the central issues at the heart of the contemporary environmental discourse.1 For example, in the Mediterranean, coastal, riverine and wetland areas...

Integrated assessment models, decision support systems (DSS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are examples of a growing number of computer-based tools designed to provide decision and information support to people engaged in formulating and implementing environmental policy and management. It is recognized that environmental policy and mana...

As environmental science has broadened to address policy concerns, there has been an effort to transfer the perceived benefits of formal modelling to these new areas through the creation of computer-based support tools. However, a number of poorly addressed issues pose barriers to the uptake of such tools. These issues are discussed to argue that t...

To support moves towards more sustainable modes of natural resource management, the research community has been engaged in an evaluation of paradigms, theories and methods which might provide useful and usable insights into such a complex problem set. A particularly influential family of theoretical models concerned with the processes and dynamics...

An efficient water use prediction tool will be needed to guide planning for an area of massive housebuilding programme which is concerned about lack of water resources. Initially problems like reliable supply of water whilst maintaining river flow and ground water level were not adequately discussed. Demand forecasting provides a basis for understa...

Integrated assessment models, decision support systems (DSS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are examples of a growing number of computer-based tools designed to provide scientific decision and information support to people within environmental management and policy organizations. It is recognized that end-user organizations are often not...

AbstractCo-evolutionary theories from the biological sciences have been widely adopted by researchers in other fields of research. We take the unusual step of looking beyond the more recent literature of the 1960s to co-evolutionary models from the nineteenth century. We argue that the Darwin–Huxley synthesis was unusual and that obscuring this dis...

The current research agenda in environmental science is dominated by calls to integrate science and policy to better understand and manage links between social (human) and natural (nonhuman) processes. Freshwater resource management is one area where such calls can be heard. Designing computer-based models for integrated environmental science poses...

A great deal of new knowledge and research material have been generated from research carried out under the auspices of the European Union (EU). However, only a small amount has been made available as practical policy-support tools. In this paper, we describe how EU funded research models and understanding have been integrated into an interactive d...

The 'Virtualis' project, founded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) component of the European Commission Framework V funding programme, to promote social learning on water use sustainability is discussed. The project involved developing a suite of four information and communication technology (ICT) tools that reflect concerns of the soci...

Formal models are an established technology for research in the environmental sciences. For several years now there has been an effort to enhance the re-usability of computer models for research purposes and to transfer the perceived benefits of formal modelling to environmental planning and policymaking. These efforts have resulted in the creation...

Participation has become part of the language of environmental management. While this move is positive there remains a danger that overly formalised and restricted participatory procedures, in terms of the information sought, may constrain and hinder dialogue and learning between the public and management agencies. Responses to specific issues are...

Research on appropriate technologies and infrastructures to support water reuse has progressed rapidly over recent decades and there are now a wide range of source--treatment--reuse options for planners to choose from. Although the economics of water reuse schemes favours application to new developments rather than retrofit projects, there are few...

Better integration in land planning and management can be supported through the use of suitable model-based tools. Vegetation state transition models have been noted as being useful in this context, providing a simple, useful means of capturing available ecological knowledge. We describe a simple ‘proof of concept’ rule-based system developed to co...

{textlessptextgreatertextless}br/textgreaterEcological understanding is often imprecise and heterogeneous; relationships between different quantities and objects may only be expressed in roughly quantitative or even non-quantitative terms. We argue that there is a need for general time-driven simulation modelling systems capable of utilising these...

Formal models are an established technology for res earch in the environmental sciences. For several years now there has been an effort to enhan ce the re-usability of computer models for research purposes and to transfer the perceived benefits of formal modelling to environmental planning and policy- making. These efforts have resulted in the crea...

Demographic pressures have led the UK Government to embark upon a substantial programme of new housing development across the country, with particular emphasis on the south and south east of England where demand is greatest. The new developments will require careful planning in terms of their geographical location, timing and in terms of infrastruc...