CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC), the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA), Water Corporation of Western Australia and New Water Ways would like to invite you to attend a seminar + workshop on a range of health outcomes derived from investments in the transition to sustainable, resilient, productive and liveable cities.

This workshop will take a deep dive into some of the pathways between water sensitive cities and health outcomes, and what the CRCWSC and WSAA have been doing to facilitate this linkage.

This is a free event for WSUD practitioners, policy makers, decision makers, planners and other professionals interested in the health benefits derived from water sensitive cities.

CRCWSC's Emma Yuen will provide an overview, followed by 3 presentations from:

• Professor Nigel Tapper on the biophysical aspects of the urban heat mitigation produced from different scales of investment in urban greening;
• Dr Sayed Iftekhar on estimating the economic benefits of urban heat mitigation;
• Gayathri Jasper on WSAA's “Health benefits from water centric liveable communities” report and how WSAA is supporting the water industry in the liveability of our communities.

The workshop will also include two sessions for group discussions.

A light lunch and detailed agenda will be provided on arrival.

Expected outcomes:

• A better understanding on what CRCWSC and WSAA are doing on improving health outcomes through water sensitive cities;
• A better understanding of the range of health outcomes that could be realised through facilitating water sensitive cities;
• A shared understanding of the main drivers of benefits from investment in urban greening;
• Increased knowledge on the availability of health dollar values derived from water sensitive cities solutions that can be used in benefit cost analysis and business case development.

Details about the presentations:

CRC for Water Sensitive Cities' Comprehensive Economic Evaluation Framework (IRP2)

The CRCWSC has developed a comprehensive economic evaluation framework and associated tools to identify and quantify economic, environmental and community values of investments in water sensitive practices and systems.  A range of benefits have been identified, including some health benefits, primarily reduced mortality/morbidity due to reduced heat.

As part of this project, Professor Nigel Tapper led a unique study to better understand the economic value of urban heat mitigation. Four landscape scenarios were developed, involving the derivation of a range of physical variables critical for modelling (e.g. plan area fraction of paved area, buildings, trees, grass, open water bodies, etc.). CRCWSC’s TARGET was used to model street level air temperature and to provide the UTCI (Universal Thermal Climate Index) outputs to measure thermal comfort. Climate modelling was then undertaken to produce daily average minimum (overnight) and maximum (midday) temperatures for each scenario, and three summer climate condition (cool, mild, and extreme).

A cost: benefit analysis was conducted to estimate dollar values of the urban heat mitigation benefits produced under the scenarios. In the analysis, four major types of benefits related to urban heat island effect mitigation were considered: reduced mortality, reduced morbidity, reduced energy demand and increased productivity. Where a scenario produced daily temperature reductions compared to the baseline, the reduction in heat-related cost reflects a benefit of that scenario.

Professor Nigel Tapper and Dr Sayed Iftekhar will present these findings.  

Water Services Association of Australia 

WSAA engaged Frontier Economics to assist in understanding and quantifying the liveability associated health benefits of water industry investments to better inform investment decisions.  Clean water is fundamental to public health. But investing in urban water to create liveable cities improves health through four pathways:

• Improvements in health resulting from more active recreation
• Improvements in mental health resulting from more exposure to green space
• Improvements in health resulting from reduced temperatures associated with the Urban Heat Island effect
• Improvements in health resulting from lower air pollution.

Ms Gayathri Jasper, WSAA's Liveability Program Advisor,  will present these findings.