The Hidden Human Factor: Why the Urban Water Workforce Holds the Key to Water Security

The pipes, pumps, treatment plants and reservoirs that keep cities supplied with clean water are usually discussed in terms of concrete, steel and capital investment. A new commentary published in Nature Water argues that this framing misses the single most important element of the system: people. Corinne Ong of the National University of Singapore and Cecilia Tortajada of the University of Glasgow and Nanyang Technological University contend that the urban water workforce — the operators, engineers, technicians, data specialists and managers who run water and wastewater services every day — is an overlooked determinant of urban water resilience. Without deliberate investment in the capacity and capability of these workers, they argue, even the most generously funded infrastructure programmes will fall short of delivering sustainable urban water management.

The timing of the intervention is significant. The commentary forms part of a series of contributions to the 2026 UN Water Conference, supported by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health as part of the UN-Water initiative to embed evidence-based policymaking in the water sector. As governments gather to negotiate responses to escalating water crises, Ong and Tortajada make the case that workforce transformation deserves the same political attention as pipes and plants. The authors acknowledge funding support from PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, an organisation frequently cited as a global benchmark for integrated water management and one that has invested heavily in developing specialised talent.

The pressures bearing down on urban water systems are well documented. Climate change is intensifying both floods and droughts, forcing utilities to manage extremes that legacy systems were never designed to withstand. Ageing infrastructure — much of it buried beneath city streets for half a century or more — is failing at rising rates, with pipe bursts, sewer overflows and treatment plant breakdowns imposing growing costs on operators and communities. Urban expansion adds another layer of stress, as informal settlements and fast-growing peri-urban districts often develop faster than formal water networks can reach them. Meanwhile, technological change is rewriting the skills profile of the sector entirely, as digitalisation, automation, remote sensing and artificial intelligence enter control rooms that were once run on manual gauges and experience-based judgement.

Each of these pressures translates into a human challenge. Consider the demographic problem first. Across many developed economies, the water workforce is ageing faster than the broader labour market, and retirements are outpacing recruitment. Studies cited in the commentary, including analysis by Brookings on renewing the water workforce in the United States, describe a widening pipeline gap: fewer young people enter water-related trades and professions than the sector needs to replace those leaving. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly highlighted this workforce constraint alongside its funding programmes, including the water infrastructure investments announced under the bipartisan infrastructure law, which explicitly call for prioritising underserved communities. Money, the argument goes, cannot buy competence; somewhere between the appropriation of funds and the delivery of a resilient system stands a technician who must be trained, certified and retained.

The technological dimension of the workforce problem is equally consequential. Research published in Environmental Science & Technology by Garrido-Baserba and colleagues has examined how the digitalisation of wastewater operations changes decision-making in utilities, introducing data-driven control strategies that demand new competencies. The commentary extends this analysis to cybersecurity, an increasingly urgent concern as water and sewer infrastructure becomes networked. Work from Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin on the future evolution of water infrastructure and associated cyber risks, together with industry analyses from GHD on overcoming vulnerabilities in critical water infrastructure, illustrates how digital transformation creates exposure that only a skilled, security-aware workforce can manage. A treatment plant that can be operated remotely can also, in principle, be attacked remotely — and the first line of defence is not software but the human expertise layered around it.

Different jurisdictions are already experimenting with different workforce models, and the commentary draws together these scattered examples into a coherent agenda. In the United States, the EPA maintains dedicated resources on the water infrastructure sector workforce, framing workforce development as integral to infrastructure sustainability. In Australia, the New South Wales Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has published a water industry traineeship guide designed to create structured entry pathways into the sector. New Zealand has gone further with a national competency framework maintained by Water New Zealand, which sets out the skills and standards expected of water professionals across the industry. In the United Kingdom, the sector skills body Energy & Utility Skills published a workforce renewal and skills strategy in 2020 anticipating demographic decline and skills shortages across energy and water utilities, while case studies such as Thames Water’s diversity and inclusion programme demonstrate attempts to widen the recruitment base.

Singapore offers perhaps the most comprehensive illustration of what deliberate workforce transformation looks like. PUB’s long-running innovation series documents how the city-state has paired infrastructure investment with sustained research and development capacity, cultivating in-house expertise in membrane technology, water reuse and integrated catchment management. The lesson, Ong and Tortajada suggest, is that technology adoption and workforce development are not parallel tracks but a single system: advanced treatment processes only deliver value when engineers understand them, operators can run them and managers can plan around them. UNESCO’s 2016 World Water Development Report, subtitled Water and Jobs, made a related macro-level argument nearly a decade ago — that water and employment are mutually reinforcing — but the commentary argues that this insight has still not been translated into routine workforce planning within urban utilities.

The health dimension of the workforce question also deserves emphasis. Research from New Zealand, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal by Chambers and colleagues, has examined drinking-water quality outcomes in ways that ultimately trace back to the competence of those operating supplies. When treatment fails, the public health consequences can be immediate and severe, as outbreaks of waterborne disease in various countries have demonstrated. This elevates workforce capability from a sectoral concern to a matter of public safety, comparable to aviation safety culture or medical training standards. Yet the water sector rarely enjoys the professional visibility of those industries, and the commentary argues that raising the status, pay and career prospects of water workers is therefore not merely an employment issue but a structural investment in public health and trust.

What, concretely, would a transformed urban water workforce look like? Drawing on the evidence assembled in the commentary, several elements emerge. Utilities and governments would treat workforce planning as a core function, mapping future skill needs against climate scenarios and digital roadmaps rather than filling vacancies reactively. Education and training pipelines would be formalised through apprenticeships, traineeships and competency frameworks of the kind already piloted in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Recruitment would broaden beyond traditional engineering cohorts to include data scientists, cyber specialists and community engagement professionals, alongside deliberate efforts to diversify the workforce and include underrepresented groups. Retention would be addressed through career progression, fair compensation and professional recognition, countering the attrition that drains experienced operators into other industries. And international cooperation — the spirit of the 2026 UN Water Conference process — would help transfer these models to cities in lower-income countries, where workforce gaps are often most acute and where urbanisation is fastest.

The broader message of the commentary is one of reframing. Water security is usually measured in cubic metres, infrastructure asset registers and investment sums. Ong and Tortajada ask policymakers to add a different metric: does the city have enough people with the right skills to design, build, operate, secure and adapt its water systems under conditions of accelerating change? Their answer, informed by evidence spanning the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, is that most cities do not — and that this human deficit is quietly undermining decades of infrastructure investment. If the urban century is to be water-secure, they conclude, the transformation of the urban water workforce is not an optional complement to infrastructure spending but its essential foundation. The pipes, in other words, are only as resilient as the people who run them, and the time to invest in those people is now.

Subject of Research: The role of workforce transformation in supporting urban water security.

Article Title: Transforming the urban water workforce will support water security

Article References: Ong, C., & Tortajada, C. (2026). Transforming the urban water workforce will support water security. Nature Water. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-026-00708-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44221-026-00708-8

Keywords: urban water workforce, water security, water infrastructure, climate change, digitalisation, cybersecurity, workforce training, competency frameworks, urban water management, Nature Water, UN Water Conference, water utilities