Systems Water Management Framework for Catchment Scale Processes (CASYWat)

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The recently released 25 Year Environment Plan recognises the need to put the environment at the heart of planning and development to create better places for people to live and work. Its supporting evidence highlights the need for taking a more systems based approach to water environment management, and the need for better understanding of complexity across water systems, including their interaction with land management and use. Within the 25YEP, the Cumbria Catchment Pioneer led by the Environment Agency (EA) is aimed at testing new governance models for the environmental management of river catchments as a whole, which is assumed to be a key enabler for the successful implementation of the natural capital accounting. The key challenges within the Cumbria Catchment Pioneer include complex interactions between water availability, quality and flood risk management, land management, visitor and rural economy and habitat decline. Therefore, significant progress will only be made by recognising wider water environment uses and priorities, and working more coherently across stakeholders and their interests. In collaboration with the EA and their wide range of stakeholders, this project will apply systems thinking and systemic approaches to understanding, structuring and measuring the catchment water system complexity of the Cumbria Pioneer. It will develop a novel Systems Water Management framework for Catchment Scale Processes (CASYWat) that will guide and support practical interpretation and demonstration of the key concepts underpinning the 25YEP. The framework will define the components of the system, relationships between these components, and a shared meta-model that integrates these elements. This will enable the complexity to be communicated to, and understood by the stakeholders, so that they can develop a shared purpose and collective strategy for integrated catchment management in the Cumbrian context, and engage in effective decision-making. The work is proposed as a 12-months placement with Dr Mijic working 80% of time as part of the EA. The work programme consists of three stages (S), namely: (S1) How to approach complexity in a catchment water management system? This stage will put catchment water management into systems thinking context, map individual concerns of key stakeholders involved in the Cumbria Pioneer water management decisions and develop individual perceptual models of the catchment water management system; (S2) How to integrate the components to describe a catchment water management system? This stage will develop a shared meta-model of the system and a prototype version of the CASYWat framework; (S3) How to use the developed framework to analyse the system and assess its performance? This stage will test the applicability of the CASYWat framework using the Cumbia Pioneer case studies defined in S1, and map systems and other assessment tools (including environmental modelling, system dynamics and natural capital assessment) that can be used to quantify Measures of Success defined in S2.The project will build strongly upon earlier work of the applicant. Dr Mijic has a strong track record of process understanding, advanced modelling and analysis of complex water systems. The outcomes from her NERC funded catchment water management projects (NE/I022485/1 and NE/N01670X/1) will feed directly into the placement. She will also draw upon her expertise in systems approach to urban water management (Climate KIC Blue Green Dream) and the Environmental Risks to Infrastructure projects that were delivered in collaboration with multiple partners, including the EA and the London Borough of Barnet (NE/M008169/1) and Thames Water (NE/M008312/1), respectively. Finally, the work will be strongly linked with the recently awarded NERC RISE programme grant (CAMELLIA), where Dr Mijic is leading the development of the Systems Water Management Framework for Urban Scale Processes (USYWat).