Historical development of four Dutch urban drinking water infrastructures

This report describes the results of a study of the infrastructural developments of four different Dutch urban drinking water systems and the identification of the drivers behind these changes. The major investments in the drinking water infrastructure of the four Dutch urban areas of Amsterdam, Groningen, Arnhem-Nijmegen and Maastricht were identified as well as the drivers behind the investments. This study is part of the project ‘drinking water infrastructure of the future’, in which critical insights and lessons learned from past transitions will be used in exploring plausible future transitions. This report provides detailed background info to chapter 3 of the main report: BTO 2015.048 Strategic planning of drinking water infrastructure: a conceptual framework and building blocks for drinking water companies.
The research objectives were to identify the changes that occurred, the main drivers and the main actors behind these changes. More specifically, the research questions objectives of this study were:
– What are the most important developments in the drinking water infrastructure of the Dutch cities in the past decades?
– What are the most important drivers, reasons or incentives for these developments and investments? How can these drivers be classified? Can the drivers be classified as internal (within the company itself), external (e.g. policy, climate, behavior, etc.), or transitional (company may have some influence but also depends on external actors).
– Which patterns, trends and drivers with respect to investments in the drinking water infrastructure can be distilled from these analyses?