Climate resilience CWMS through data driven awareness

Community Wastewater Management Systems (CWMS) service approximately 80% of South Australian water entities outside of state service areas. These systems are typically owned and managed by local councils.

The systems manage sewage from on-site septic tanks or full sewer connections, and face significant challenges from climate change and operational constraints.

Who this is for

This project supports regional councils in SA and CWMS operators. It's also relevant to council decision-makers, infrastructure planners and regional communities who rely on these systems.

What's being delivered

• Central portal for data discovery, visualisation and future prediction model development.
• Improvement of long-term sustainability and service reliability of regional South Australia’s CWMS.
• Support for council's to make more informed decisions by linking climate, system performance, demand and infrastructure data.

About the project

The research project was completed in three stages and based on two concurrent case studies. This was to understand the CWMS data management and analytics requirements.

The case studies were with the City of Onkaparinga and District Council of Mount Remarkable.

Findings and outcomes

The digital data and information sharing framework will help councils and communities use digital tools and share data to better prepare for climate impacts.

Challenges

In some cases, operation and maintenance of CWMS assets is predominantly reactive. Operators struggle with system overload and only become aware of issues when problems are reported or equipment fails. This leads to a heavy focus on troubleshooting rather than preventative maintenance.

Other challenges include:

• growing populations are putting more pressure on systems
• many systems rely on residents paying fees, but some communities can’t afford rising costs
• extreme weather (droughts and floods) makes systems harder to manage
• data isn’t always accurate or well reported.

Solutions

To address this, a framework was developed based on the case studies with City of Onkaparinga and District Council of Mount Remarkable. The framework is designed to be practical so diverse regional councils can implement it easily.

By connecting important data categories – such as climate, system performance, demand, and infrastructure – councils can gain insights to make informed decisions.

Councils will be able to:

• predict peak inflows and stormwater intrusion
• target infrastructure upgrades for flood-prone areas
• align operational strategies with the growing importance of wastewater recycling and net zero emissions targets.

Central digital portal

Development of a central digital portal brings all key data together. It allows regional councils to easily find and view data and use models to predict future issues.

This shifts the approach from troubleshooting to a resilient, data-driven approach to identify and prevent issues. This approach is essential for ensuring the sustainability and service reliability of regional wastewater management systems.

Final project report

View the Climate Resilience CWMS Final Project Report (PDF 1.9 MB).

Project funding

This project was funded through the Community Wastewater Innovation Fund.

This scheme allocates funding to projects to support innovation within the CWMS sector. Successful applicants are decided through an annual grant round.