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

The research, conducted by Elizabeth Kafui Senya of Accra Technical University and Anthony Bordoh of the University of Education, Winneba, focuses on the Accra Metropolitan Area, the commercial heart of Ghana and the hub of its tourism economy. Published in SN Social Sciences, the study surveyed 90 senior managers drawn from hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, car rental services and allied venues across the Greater Accra Region. Using a multi-stage sampling procedure, the researchers first selected nine Municipal and Metropolitan District Assemblies and then reached the managers who had lived through the pandemic’s worst disruptions at first hand.

The findings document a cascade of operational failures that unfolded in a predictable but devastating sequence. Mobility restrictions imposed by the government, including the Executive Instrument E.I. 63 that limited movement and gatherings, triggered an acute contraction in demand. With travellers staying home and international visitors absent, revenues collapsed. Firms responded by retrenching workers, deepening the economic pain in a sector that is one of Ghana’s most important employers. Supply chains fractured at the same time, as suppliers of food, beverages and hospitality consumables faced their own lockdown constraints. The cancellation of international conferences removed another critical revenue stream, one that fills hotel rooms and restaurant tables in Accra throughout the year, particularly during the peak season.

These results align with a broader international literature on the pandemic’s impact on hospitality. Studies from India, Spain and global assessments of tourism during COVID-19 all recorded demand shocks, workforce losses and supply disruption. But the Ghanaian study adds an important dimension: the perspective of firms operating in an emerging economy where government support was limited and where many businesses had no financial reserves to fall back on. The authors argue that structural vulnerabilities in developing economies made the pandemic disproportionately damaging, and that understanding how firms in such contexts coped is essential for building crisis-ready industries worldwide.

Methodologically, the study is notable for the rigour of its measurement. The researchers employed a quantitative cross-sectional survey design consistent with the positivist research paradigm, distributing structured questionnaires to the participating managers. To test whether their survey instruments reliably captured the concepts they intended to measure, they turned to Confirmatory Factor Analysis embedded within Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, a statistical framework widely used in business research for handling complex relationships between latent constructs. The psychometric results were exceptionally strong. Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency, ranged from 0.979 to 0.987 across the study’s three constructs, far above the conventional threshold of 0.70. Composite reliability values ranged from 0.981 to 0.990, and the average variance extracted, which indicates how much of the variance in the indicators is captured by the underlying construct, fell between 0.795 and 0.898, well above the 0.50 benchmark typically required for convergent validity. All factor loadings exceeded 0.70, meaning every survey item contributed meaningfully to its construct.

For readers unfamiliar with these statistics, the numbers matter because they tell us the findings rest on solid measurement rather than noisy data. When Cronbach’s alpha approaches 0.99, respondents answered related questions in a highly consistent way, suggesting the survey tapped a coherent underlying reality. High average variance extracted means the constructs are distinct and well defined. In practical terms, the study’s conclusions about disruption and resilience are not artefacts of a poorly designed questionnaire; they reflect carefully validated evidence from the field.

So what actually helped firms survive? The managers surveyed identified a clear hierarchy of resilience levers. At the top of the list were prophylactic health programmes, preventive measures designed to protect staff and customers from infection and to keep operations running safely. Closely linked to this was a call for equitable health infrastructure, reflecting the recognition that business resilience in a pandemic is inseparable from public health capacity. Firms that could trust the surrounding health system, and that invested in their own protective protocols, were better positioned to reassure customers and maintain operations under restrictions.

Insurance uptake emerged as another critical strategy. In an economy where many small and medium-sized hospitality businesses operate without formal risk coverage, the pandemic exposed the cost of that gap. Managers who had insurance, or who recognised its value during the crisis, identified it as a key buffer against revenue collapse. The study suggests that expanding insurance penetration in the sector should be a policy priority, not only for individual firms but for the industry’s collective resilience.

Diversification of delivery services and digitalisation rounded out the resilience agenda. With dine-in traffic restricted, restaurants and hotels that could pivot to delivery, takeaway and online ordering maintained at least a trickle of revenue. Digital tools, from online booking platforms to mobile payment systems and social media marketing, allowed firms to reach customers without physical contact and to adapt their offerings as conditions changed. The pandemic, in effect, accelerated a digital transition that many Ghanaian hospitality firms had postponed, and the managers surveyed now regard digital capability as a core survival asset rather than an optional extra.

The study’s contribution goes beyond documenting damage. By providing empirical, firm-level evidence from an understudied Sub-Saharan emerging economy, it fills a gap in the crisis management and organisational resilience literature, which has historically been dominated by research from Europe, North America and Asia. The authors argue that resilience in hospitality is not a one-size-fits-all formula: strategies that work in well-resourced markets may be unavailable or insufficient in contexts with weaker institutions and thinner financial safety nets. Their findings point toward a resilience agenda tailored to developing economies, one that combines firm-level actions such as digitalisation, diversification and insurance with system-level investments in health infrastructure and public health preparedness. As the world braces for future pandemics and climate-related disruptions, the experience of Accra’s hotels, restaurants and malls offers a sobering lesson: the businesses most vulnerable to global shocks are often those with the fewest buffers, and strengthening their resilience requires action at every level, from the individual firm to the national health system.

Subject of Research: Firm-level operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana's hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic

Article Title: Operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana’s hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence from the Accra Metropolitan Area

Article References: Senya, E. K., & Bordoh, A. (2026). Operational disruptions and resilience strategies in Ghana’s hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: firm-level evidence from the Accra Metropolitan Area. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 452. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01744-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01744-7

Keywords: COVID-19, hospitality industry, organisational resilience, Ghana, Accra, PLS-SEM, confirmatory factor analysis, pandemic recovery, Sub-Saharan Africa, supply chain disruption, digitalisation, insurance uptake