Catchment Metabolism: Integrating Natural Capital in the Asset Management portfolio of the Water Sector

The policy of the water sector demands integrated and resilient asset management. The majority of current research focuses on urban or community asset systems. To provide a fully integrated approach, one needs to delineate the focus of asset management at a catchment scale, to include the natural capital. The research described in this paper introduces such an approach, with the Environmental Regional Input-Output (E-RIO) analysis at its core.
The novelty of the work is the conceptualisation of a catchment as a complex asset system, comprising of multiple subsystems. This expands the application of Industrial Ecology and functional modelling techniques in Integrated Catchment Management and Water Accounting. The Catchment Metabolism modelling schema presented serves asset, water resources and catchment management purposes. The schema forms the grounds for structured collaboration among experts for integrated water resources planning and decision-making. In this paper presents the process of creating the modelling schema along with the techniques used are presented. A ‘live’ industrial example from the UK water sector is used to demonstrate its application.