From risk to safety management: stakeholder engagement to inform the governance and design if water reuse schemes.

Water reuse is a feasible technological approach to addressing urban water management challenges. Whilst stakeholder acceptance is acknowledged as important for scheme success, less is known about how to interpret and influence stakeholder attitudes to water reuse, how preferences for risk mitigation influence scheme design, and what forms of engagement with risk work in what contexts. This thesis aims to understand the nature of stakeholder perceptions and expectations in the context of water reuse schemes, and to critically evaluate how stakeholder engagement with risk management can be used to enhance the governance and design of water reuse schemes. Through an embedded case study design and mixed-methods research, perceptions of water reuse as a feasible water management intervention in London are explored. This study offers a number of contributions to the immediate field of research. Firstly, the findings highlight perceived benefits to engaging stakeholders through more collaborative learning-by-doing risk management. Secondly, the findings help to improve knowledge of methods for interpreting, informing and influencing stakeholders’ perceptions through mediums such as online news and video animations. Thirdly, findings contribute to the understanding of the effectiveness of communication through showing an impact on public perceptions predicated on the focal characteristics of risk management messages. Fourthly, findings indicate that preferences for different recycled water uses and perceptions of certain scheme configurations could influence design decisions. Finally, findings support benefits of including stakeholders in multi-criteria evaluations of risk-based decisions. A further contribution of this research is the identification of a number of thematic conditions necessary for enhancing scheme governance and design. These thematic conditions can assist in developing knowledge that focuses on overcoming the challenges of translating contemporary management and design theory into practice. In particular, this research highlights implication for advancing state-of-the-art risk management frameworks, specifically, through adopting more adaptive rationales informed through stakeholder engagement. This study contributes to the development of local and regional capabilities for water reuse risk management with implications for developing more strategic water reuse guidance and policy.

STREAM EngD programme