Urban and Rural Water

Droughts and variable rainfall are a fact of life in Australia. Water supply and management is vital to the future of our cities as well as industries such as agriculture and mining operating in regional areas. Decision makers face a range of challenging questions.

When is it worthwhile to invest in new water supply? Is it better to invest in desalination, water recycling, dams or fixing leakage? What standards should we place on the number of water supply interruptions and sewage overflows? How much water will households and businesses use in the future? At what level should water prices be set?

The CIE have answered these questions and many others for clients from across Australia. Often this work has involved the use of economic cost-benefit analysis to weigh up competing investment or policy options. We pride ourselves on working closely with stakeholders, including hydrologists and engineers, to understand all of the customer experience, environmental and cost impacts of each option.

We have designed and conducted customer engagement programs – both large and small – to help urban water utilities to make decisions in partnership with customers or informed by quantitative evidence of customer preferences. Placing a dollar value on the benefits of water supply/management decisions is rarely straightforward, but we have a proven track record in estimating these benefits for our clients using technically rigorous surveys designed to elicit customer willingness to pay.