The Aquihood Spatial System and the Water Accountability Feedback Cycle
The Aquihood Spatial System is based on several core goals, in order of importance:
Recharging aquifers locally to support abundant, just and sustainable access to drinking water.
Mitigating flooding associated with climate change.
Creating walkable urbanism based on local communities, with day-to-day services close at hand, while forming part of wider nested transport networks that provide access to specialized health, cultural, educational and other services and resources.
Supporting local agriculture and industry, as well as local sewage, waste and energy management.
Conceptual water accountability equation relating the local rainfall resource and water use of a designated area to its supported living density.
The Aquihood approach is based on a state of continual optimization, taking place at key milestones and according to seasonal and other cyclical timelines.
Within the broader Aquihood Spatial System, the Aquihood Water Accountability Feedback Cycle provides a step-by-step logistical cycle for understanding and improving the relationship between local water resources, water use and the built environment. Once completed, the cycle is optimized, refined and repeated.
1. Delineate
Main Goal:
To increase local and global awareness of topography and local watershed boundaries.
Logistical Goal:
Define watershed boundaries and zones of responsibility, and create simple, easily accessible maps of local, walkable watersheds.
2. Collect
Main Goal:
To increase local and global awareness of local water resources and local water users.
Logistical Goal:
Collect baseline data and calculate or interpolate key metrics according to Aquihood watershed boundaries, including population, land use, rainfall, water consumption, runoff, infiltration, groundwater recharge, impervious cover, built footprint, floor area ratio and green space.
3. Measure
Main Goal:
To create transparency about whether an Aquihood is operating at a water deficit, thereby contributing to world water scarcity; operating at a water-neutral level; or creating conditions in which local aquifer recharge exceeds local water use.
Logistical Goal:
Create a comparable index of water performance that allows the success of an Aquihood to be measured both in comparison with other Aquihoods and over time.
4. Monitor
Main Goal:
To create ongoing responsibility and accountability for local water resources and their relationship to population, social factors and services, economic growth and real estate development.
Logistical Goal:
Establish systems through which relevant data can be regularly and, where possible, automatically collected according to Aquihood boundaries and their larger nested watershed districts.
5. Verify
Main Goal:
To create cross-disciplinary trust in the Aquihood System.
Logistical Goal:
Enable Aquihood analysis to be independently reproduced and verified by relevant professional disciplines.
6. Report
Main Goal:
To create full transparency regarding local Aquihood performance, including both successes and failures.
Logistical Goal:
Make information easily accessible, both in terms of its availability and the usability of the interface through which it is communicated.
7. Benchmark
Main Goal:
To define specific minimum policy requirements for Aquihood performance.
Logistical Goal:
Establish measurable parameters for matters including local water use, zoning changes, built footprint, surface materials, population size and density, transportation corridors at varying speeds, ecological corridors and walkability.
8. Improve
Main Goal:
To restore urban environments and conserve natural environments through local community stewardship, working toward greater local resource self-sufficiency while remaining connected to a larger cultural and societal network.
Logistical Goal:
Carry out infrastructure, maintenance and building interventions necessary to reach benchmarked goals, including goals relating to water, food security, energy production, and sewage and waste management.
9. Certify
Main Goal:
To create global trust in the Aquihood System and enable successful approaches to be scaled globally through implementation at the local level.
Logistical Goal:
Evaluate the successes and failures of interventions and develop replicable standards supported by implemented case studies that can inform application in different geographic contexts.
10. Adapt
Main Goal:
To allow the system to adapt and change according to cyclical and geographic conditions, building upon implemented improvements.
Logistical Goal:
Enable continuous optimization. This may include, for example, changes to Aquihood boundaries in response to implemented infrastructure or alterations to topography, or changes to allowable population density in response to innovations that reduce water consumption or increase available local water resources.
The completion of the Adapt stage begins a new cycle of Delineation, Collection, Measurement, Monitoring, Verification, Reporting, Benchmarking, Improvement, Certification and Adaptation. The Aquihood Water Accountability Feedback Cycle is therefore not intended to produce a fixed end state, but to provide a continually evolving system of local environmental accountability and improvement.
Concepts of representation and revenue collection have not yet been included in this description. These governance dimensions will be developed separately according to the principle of “Ten Billion Voices,” which can be read in Urban Action Avenue of the Cities Forum.
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