COVID-19 & The Water Sector: Understanding Impact, Preparedness and Resilience
Dr. Sarah Cotterill is an Assistant Professor in the School of Civil Engineering. Her research interests broadly focus on the water sector, ranging from water quality to water efficiency and resource recovery from wastewater. When the COVID-19 pandemic led to national lockdowns in hundreds of countries around the world, Sarah was back in the UK visiting family. A chat with a former colleague led to the rapid creation and distribution of a questionnaire to UK water professionals, through the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM). The questionnaire sought to understand the experiences and perceptions of organisational response in the water sector. Findings were evaluated on the measures of mitigation, adaptation, coping and learning, aligning with Butler et al.’s 2017 resilience framework. This coffee morning talk provides a whistle-stop tour of the findings and the challenges the sector faced, from increased water demand, to changes in wastewater load, and sewer network blockages.
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