WRAF: Water Resilience Assessment Framework
Informing Decision-Making for Water System Resilience
Climate change is driving many types of water challenges, including water scarcity and abundance, worsening water quality, and shifts in timing of the hydrologic cycle. Shocks and stresses affect the resilience of water systems and the stakeholders that rely on them. Specific guidance on how to understand system resilience and measure systematic changes and intervening actions can ensure a more resilient future for all. The Water Resilience Assessment Framework (WRAF) is the product of a multi-year effort under the leadership of the CEO Water Mandate, a UN Global Compact initiative in co-secretariat with the Pacific Institute, in partnership with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the Pacific Institute, the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) and World Resources Institute (WRI). The Framework is designed to inform and support decisions and actions among stakeholders to ensure both short- and long-term water system resilience.
Many organizations are just beginning to explore how to implement resilience perspectives into their programs and strategies. WRAF is a stepwise approach that assumes no background knowledge even as it introduces advanced concepts and methodologies for defining a resilience strategy, specifying resilient outcomes, and developing resilience indicators for a wide range of situations, institutions, and contexts.
In response to the pressing concerns posed by climate change on the effectiveness of conventional water sustainability metrics, the WRAF prioritizes water resilience. This emphasis is not only due to water's indispensable role in supporting life but also because it plays a critical part in all facets of the systems that drive and sustain our economies.
By adopting an iterative approach, the WRAF can complement existing water-management processes, fostering a shared comprehension of our advancements towards achieving common resilience objectives.
Actionable Guidance Documents
The original Water Resilience Assessment Framework (2021) features an overview of the collective comprehension of water system resilience, enabling practitioners to establish universally measurable objectives for stakeholder engagement and resilience planning. Since then, additional sector-specific guidance documents have been made available.
*Main Guidance Document
About WRAF
WRAF is intended to facilitate a shared understanding of water system resilience and allow practitioners to develop common measurable goals and outcomes for stakeholder and resilience planning. Climate change, population growth, and various human-induced effects, along with extreme events, are transforming our planet and challenging what we consider normal. This situation brings forth novel possibilities and difficulties, often difficult to anticipate. In order to confront these challenges and capitalize on opportunities, we must ready our urban areas, enterprises, utilities, and agricultural practices for substantial transformations. It is crucial to construct resilient systems that can adapt and evolve to these changes both on an individual and collective level. The Water Resilience Assessment Framework (WRAF) has been devised precisely to aid these endeavors in bolstering resilience.
Establishing water resilience on a systemic scale demands the harmonization, openness, and shared objectives of various stakeholders, including the public, private sector, and civil society. To achieve collective resilience, it is imperative to have a resilient basin that serves as a fundamental requirement for all involved parties. Nonetheless, although basin water resilience is necessary, it alone is not adequate to ensure the resilience of individual stakeholders.
In 2019, the Water Resilience Assessment Framework (WRAF) was initiated with primary funding from BHP. The project's objective is to create a pragmatic framework that facilitates the establishment and assessment of resilience at various levels. This framework is developed in collaboration with essential stakeholders, leveraging their ongoing resilience-building initiatives and fostering a unified understanding where differences exist. The ultimate aim is to make the framework universally applicable to all water users, managers, and decision-makers across diverse water contexts and scales.
WRAF is an interactive process that consists of four key steps:
Visualize the system
Develop a resilience strategy
Test the resilience strategy
Evaluate
Partners
Development of WRAF has been led by CEO Water Mandate, in partnership with the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), World Resources Institute (WRI), and Pacific Institute (PI).
Additional Resources
Launching WRAF [blog article]
Pacific Institute’s ‘From Resilience Indicators to Action’ [video - WWW 2021]
CEO Water Mandate Website [project background]