Utilities and municipalities are challenged to go beyond traditional levels of service to deliver solutions that mitigate climate impacts, improve infrastructure and address broader community needs. Due to its cross-cutting benefits as a strategy, communities are increasing prioritization and investments in green infrastructure to manage stormwater objectives while enhancing community health, improving overall infrastructure, and providing opportunities, especially for disadvantaged populations. Additionally, as a nature-based solution, green infrastructure provides a resilient solution set to mitigate and address the impacts of climate change. This webinar will provide motivation and drivers for green infrastructure, case studies and concepts exploring policy and equity for green infrastructure from stormwater parks to healthy streets to a wide variety of community amenities.

We’ll showcase unique built environment net-zero projects from around the world. While each project has its own strategies, complexities, and opportunities, they all also have commonalities - vision, passion, and relentless drive to achieve net-zero outcomes. Top-down leadership and an engaged team are crucial to delivering on the long-term vision. We should feel encouraged by the leadership and actions we are seeing across the world.

See the innovative ways water utilities are pushing the boundaries on decarbonization to help reduce our global carbon footprint and bring substantial benefits to organizations and the communities they serve. Water utilities are embedded in nearly every community around the world. Imagine the impact we could have on the world’s biggest challenges if we continue to think differently and challenge the traditional role of the water sector.

Infrastructure projects are becoming more challenging as we address aging infrastructure, capacity issues, climate change, population growth and conflicts with other existing infrastructure. Optimization technology employs sophisticated algorithms, enhanced computation and automation to assist water utilities in finding solutions to these complex infrastructure problems that maximize benefits and minimize costs. In this webinar, we will present examples from Anglian Water’s Strategic Pipeline Alliance, a CSO Long-Term Control Plan and others with our partner Optimatics.

While we respond to other pressing global challenges, climate change remains one of the biggest threats to life on this planet as we know it. As anchor institutions embedded in nearly every community, water systems have an opportunity to accelerate our progress, playing an even bigger role in delivering decarbonization and resilience measures against climate change. In this webinar we will present the key findings of the recent IPCC AR6 ‘Physical Science Basis’ report of greatest relevance to the Water sector. We will help identify the potential vulnerabilities and make practical recommendations for resilience actions that can be taken to pro-actively manage them.

In this “In the kNOW” webinar, we will explore the role of water resource recovery facilities (WRRF) in combating the climate emergency. The wastewater sector offers immense opportunities to contribute to climate goals. Two utilities – Metro Vancouver and VCS Denmark - will share their experience identifying and implementing measures to reduce emissions and achieve energy neutrality goals. We will also discuss the latest research on the quantification of nitrous oxide and methane emissions, considering global best science and the ambitions of the U.K. water sector as part of their 2030 net zero route map.

Within watersheds and across community boundaries, utilities are tackling complex challenges in sustainably, equitably, and safely managing water. Addressing these challenges requires integrated, collaborative solutions that are specific to the regional watershed, beneficial to local communities, and rooted in the context of the global water cycle. Integrated or One Water approaches are not a one size fits all. In this webinar we will learn how two utilities – the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District and Las Virgenes Municipal Water District – are addressing very different water quality and water quantity challenges.

Cities are archetypal ‘systems of systems’ – everything connects to and impacts everything else. Elements of cities – infrastructure, services, open spaces, community activities, and more – cannot and should not be addressed in isolation. Historically, this mono-dimensional approach has been commonplace. Recognizing, devising, instituting, and operationalizing a comprehensive, integrated systems-based approach to strategy, planning, design, and development of water infrastructure is essential to the future of cities; and cities are fundamental to the global attempts to properly manage the water cycle and address climate change and social inequities. In this “In the kNOW” webinar, we will explore the role of water infrastructure projects as catalysts for urban revitalization, presenting a case for this transformative approach and sharing actual examples to highlight its successes to date, while defining remaining challenges.

For this webinar at the virtual London Festival of Architecture event on June 17, 2021, Jacobs’ Head of Cities Solutions for Europe Carlo Castelli was joined by a panel of thought leaders to discuss the future of public space.

This webinar at the virtual London Festival of Architecture event on June 14, 2021, deconstructs the concept of “health care” and explores how we can deliver solutions for health and wellbeing by transforming our engagement with each other.

Getting the best possible raw water quality is fundamentally important to water treatment. Engineering higher water quality in drinking water reservoirs is practical and powerful. There are emerging methods to predict spikes in taste and odor compounds or harmful algae blooms days, if not weeks, in advance using machine learning tools. In this webinar, you will learn how Clayton County Water Authority in Georgia, U.S., manages water quality in its indirect reuse reservoirs employing state-of-art water supply protection within an integrated water management program.

The American Rescue Plan Act, provides $1.9 trillion in relief to families, small businesses, and state and local governments to offset lost revenues and put significant effort into expediting COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution. An infrastructure bill is expected to work its way through the U.S. Congress in the next few months that will follow up with targeted funding for specific sectors of infrastructure, including water, transportation and others. Additional federal funding is being channeled through existing programs, such as continuation of federal contributions to low-interest loan programs for water and transportation sectors.