The aim of the City Water Resilience Approach (CWRA) is to embed urban water resilience into water systems in a way that best fits a City’s unique context.

The first cities to implement the Approach and develop water resilience profiles and action plans are the cities of Cape Town and Greater Miami and the Beaches.

The CWRA has been developed and tested in close partnership with these and other cities around the world. They have been instrumental in its development, contributing knowledge and the willingness to co-create a solution that can inspire others to tackle their own water resilience challenges enabled by the CWRA.

The framework and supporting methodology was developed to help cities provide safer and more secure water resources for their citizens and protect communities and property from water-related shocks and stresses. It provides a globally applicable, transparent, objective and evidence-based approach to create a shared understanding of water resilience of a city and collaboratively develop and implement a resilient action plan.

The Water Resilience Profiles for Cape Town and Greater Miami provide an opportunity to see how the CWRA brings stakeholders together to develop a comprehensive assessment of water management in a city and translate this diagnosis into opportunities to improve the water resilience of the city. The documents describe the assessment process and its results, identifying strengths that can be leveraged and built on, as well as those areas that can be improved to ensure water security and protection from water shocks and stresses in the city. They set out how the insights from the assessment translate these conclusions into tangible new actions that build each city’s water resilience.

Publication date: 14 January, 2020
Authors: The CWRA Cape Town project team includes George Beane (Arup), Katrin Bruebach (100 Resilient Cities), Louise Ellis (Resilience Shift / Arup), Sophie Fisher (Arup), Gareth Morgan (City of Cape Town), Julia Munroe (City of Cape Town), Martin Shouler (Resilience Shift / Arup), Martine Sobey (100 Resilient Cities) and Roman Svidran (Arup). With grateful thanks to GreenCape, the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership and the City of Cape Town Water and Sanitation Department for the provision of venues and catering for the Assessment Workshops and the Visioning Workshop.