Krueger, Elisabeth

New approaches to ensure urban water supply resilience are urgently needed. This requires moving beyond the management of water scarcity through infrastructural measures to understanding resilience as an outcome of complex interactions between people, water resources and technological infrastructure, which affect water services as urban commons. We conceptualize urban water systems as Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS), also referred to as Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS). We analyze the CIS/SETS from different stakeholder perspectives to create a pluralistic, yet systematic, understanding of CIS/SETS interactions. We conducted a household survey (N=300) and expert interviews (N=19) in Amman, one of the world’s water scarcity hot spots. Our data analysis results in 1) the identification and characterization of new interactions among CIS/SETS sub-systems. We contribute this urban, resource-scarce example to the growing CIS-typology, which aims to identify general patterns of interactions for a better comparability among systems. 2) Inspired by frame analysis, we interpret the CIS/SETS through the lens of its different actor groups. Each group focuses on different system elements and interactions, resulting in disconnected system understandings or ‘frames’. Local experts focus on deficits of CIS/SETS elements and aim to increase available resources, while international experts emphasize the efficiency of CIS/SETS interactions. Households cope with deficient water supplies by mobilizing adaptive strategies. 3) We derive uncertainties resulting from unpredictable system dynamics, missing knowledge, and different (and unrecognized) stakeholder views. Accounting for these factors in water management strategies could enhance urban water resilience and help reframe the water management from a service delivered by public authorities to meet household water demand to one of an urban commons managed through shared responsibilities.