The Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) released two white papers focusing on efforts that water utilities are making to advance planning and decision making in light of climate change information. Both papers are available online. The first paper, Embracing Uncertainty: A Case Study Examination of How Climate Change is Shifting Water Utility Planning, includes 13 case studies from utilities around the world as well as the Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources. The vignettes illustrate how these agencies are incorporating climate change information into both operational and long-term planning decisions. Some general themes were drawn from these case studies; for example, many utilities are planning for multiple climate futures and are bringing stakeholders into the planning process at the beginning of the process rather than at the end. This paper was developed in coordination with AMWA, the Water Research Foundation and AWWA.
The second paper, Actionable Science in Practice: Co-Producing Climate Change Information for Water Utility Vulnerability Assessments. Final Report of the Piloting Utility Modeling Applications Project, includes case studies highlighting the experiences of four WUCA utilities that are collaborating with local climate researchers to explore ways to incorporate the latest climate science into their own utility decision-making contexts. Although the assessment approaches at each agency is unique to their local circumstances, these utilities find value in both the bottom-up as well as top-down approach to climate modeling. In addition, each utility is flexible in exploring approaches to using climate model output in order to fit the unique needs of the agency.