Quest for Sustainable Urban Water Services: Management and Practices in Finland

Water services – water supply and sanitation – are a vital part of socio-economic functions. A sustainable society requires adequate and resilient water services for functioning continuously, and for securing proper health and environment for its members. Water services should be available for everyone, but still there are hundreds of millions of people lacking them. Even in urban areas, where communities provide services for citizens, there is insufficiency in providing adequate water supply and/or sanitation for people.

Urban water services can be considered part of municipal services, including the technical solution from water source to water treatment and distribution, and also wastewater collection, treatment and discharge back to natural waters. All this should be managed so that the state of the natural waters does not change, and that there is no risk to human health even in the long run. As part of community technical services, water services are essential for the socio-economic good of a society. They have been considered important especially for women and vulnerable members of a society. Also their significance for the economic development of a society cannot be ignored.

In this study, management and practices of urban water services were explored so that aspects for sustainability and resilience could be found out. Different aspects were studied in four separate studies, and a synthesis was then carried out concluding the results to this dissertation. The four studies concerned different parts of urban water services, and they were approached in various sets of research methods. The rallying point in the studies was sustainability of urban water services. The summary and conclusions in the synthesis of the studies was made by regarding political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors within this theme.

The results showed that for functioning water services, a wide range of expertise about society functions is needed. Basis for proper water services is knowledge about the whole function, and this requires good data management. One important aspect in resilience of Finnish water services is asset management, and in many water utilities the condition of water pipe and sewer networks are not known. Although the water sector in Finland is well managed, urban water services require attention to good governance and institutional arrangements to ensure continued and sound operation. Competence of water professionals and public awareness are both important for supporting sustainable and resilient water services.

For gaining this objective, a set of recommendations were constituted according to the results of the research. These recommendations were constituted, arising from the results of separate studies of this dissertation, as well as the synthesis of the whole research.