Setting SAILS in Toronto
In recent years, public aspirations for improving water systems in rural and Indigenous communities have risen faster than what governments and industry can realistically achieve.Policy makers have set out targets for the water industry to accomplish, but the water industry has been largely left on its own to figure out the know-how required to actually hit these targets reliably over diverse, non-urban contexts and populations.
Water Canada and theRESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation invited a prominent group of 25 thought leaders to Toronto in January 2020. The attendees have solid track records for improving policies, regulations, design guidelines and industry practices.Together, they defined a new innovation agenda focused on enhancing the capacity and scale of a streamlined approach to implementing localized solutions (SAILS) for non-urban markets.
Desired outcomes of the workshop included identifying:
• Solution standards that facilitate non-urban and Indigenous water industry growth.
• Regulations and legislation that promote industry growth.
• Chain of supply and distributions that promote suppliers to improve their product quality to boost overall demand for the solutions (e.g., parts, generators, pumps, fittings, ICT/HMI/PLC, etc.).
• Delivery protocols to improve productive efficiency (reducing time, delays and costs of deliveries; implementing and troubleshooting products and services).
