Advancing municipal natural asset management in engineering practice and beyond

Canadian local governments are seeking new strategies to deliver their core services in more financially and environmentally sustainable ways, including turning to infrastructure asset management as a key tool to manage infrastructure. Municipalities are increasingly recognizing that natural assets such as aquifers, forests, streams and foreshores can provide equivalent or better services to many engineered assets. Municipal natural asset management offers a sustainable solution to the multifaceted problems of supplying municipal services in the face of aging infrastructure, urban growth, and declining budgets. As this approach is being implemented in a growing number of Canadian municipalities, it is important to monitor results and outcomes in a rigorous manner to facilitate widespread adoption of municipal natural asset management. This project will address this by developing a framework for monitoring as well as result tracking, and report to stakeholders and the public on what is happening in key local governments with which MNAI is involved.

Faculty Supervisor:

Susan Nesbit

Student:

Parsa Shani

Partner:

Municipal Natural Assets Initiative

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of British Columbia