Good water management is critical to sustainable development and people’s well-being because of its pivotal role in economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. India faces mounting challenges to sustain universal coverage of drinking water and sanitation services due to massive investment backlogs in infrastructure, rapid urbanization, and challenges to maintaining and operating existing assets, mainly due to gaps between technology and the local community. 4WARD has a programmatic approach toward real-life problem-solving in Urban Water Systems (UWS). Specifically, 4WARD addresses improved water supply and sanitation even under the extreme surface and groundwater quality challenges at an “urban-shed” scale. We base our approach on four pilot case studies (living labs) embedded in a Digital Social Platform (DSP) designed for the project in Haldia, Palgarh, Ludhiana, and Kochi, where municipalities have demanded solutions to their respective challenges from 4WARD. Stakeholder engagement and impact assessment of interventions are pivotal to 4WARD; stakeholders are already involved. A participative process of co-design enabled by a virtual environment of the DSP will be followed that will cross-pollinate analysis, design, implementation, and lessons learned from innovative but cost-effective technical interventions, such as pressurized digesters and bio-remediation at pilot locations. 4WARD takes up the challenge of balancing engineering solutions with public acceptance and institutional design/arrangements, which is crucial for sustainable technical intervention.
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