EWSC Live

Welcome to the EWSC live section. Here you'll find information about ongoing project activities, including demonstrators, emerging research insights, our transition pathway towards WSC and community engagement activities. We embrace open innovation principles by publishing our work in progress and inviting your input. Doing so, amplifies the innovation potential of this project.

EWSC Action Area Projects

The enabling action area projects are live areas of experimentation, each exploring a design challenge connected to the themes of assets, value and stewardship.

Onsite Water Reuse

Led by Anglian Water

How might we develop clear guidance to determine the appropriate contexts for implementing decentralised community-scale systems?

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Water for People and Places

Led by Thames Water

How can anchor institutions collectively enable shared community value through local stewardship, leading to enhanced local place and prosperity?

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Partnership Delivery for WSC

Led by United Utilities

How might we create a sustainable community-led stewardship model for Integrated Water Management that empowers diverse sectors to adopt, operate, and maintain assets effectively?

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EWSC Insights Articles

The EWSC Insight articles explore the context, problems and possibilities for enabling WSC. The findings span all action areas of the EWSC Framework.

The first issue of research has been written by the Discovery research team, which is comprised of Arup, Dark Matter Labs (DML), Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and KWR Water Research Institute. The group brings together expertise in strategic design, water, housing, economics, community wealth, technology, policy and more, exploring these topics through desk research and interviews with industry experts. Input and review has been gathered from project partners.

Read the EWSC Insight Articles on our Medium page. Follow us for up-to-date issues.

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Transition Pathways

The EWSC project considers itself as part of a broader effort contributing to the transition towards more climate resilient communities by innovating in the delivery of water and housing infrastructure. The Enabling Action Projects are the first step in driving system innovation.

The aspiration is that the transition will outlast the project and we are actively exploring how this can be held after this funding is complete. This will continue to evolve throughout the duration of the project.

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Engaging Communities

Effective community engagement is essential to water smart communities. People interact with water in diverse ways, inside and outside their homes, through recreation, citizen science and much more. Water use is shaped by factors beyond the individual and household. Communities themselves will therefore play key roles as stakeholders in the development and stewardship of future water smart communities (WSCs).

This theme, led by the Universities of Manchester and East Anglia, explores how community shapes WSCs. It focuses on (i) how diverse engagement strategies influence the planning and evaluation of WSCs, and (ii) how WSCs influence community engagement and domestic practices.