Updates on AquaRating Tool for Water and Wastewater Utilities Development

Ms. Corrine Cathala, Lead Water and Sanitation Specialist from IADB, discussed about the use of AquaRating as a Management and Performance Assessment Tool, showcasing its implementation in a worldwide scale. AquaRating is a Management and Performance assessment tool for planning, investment and benchmarking of water supply utilities, and helps to determine where and when they should make their investments, based on concrete, standardized data. Experience in Fiji developed in 2016 with ADB was also discussed.

Vita Sanderson​

Vita is a chartered structural engineer who currently works at Arup where she supports development clients on the implementation of infrastructure, particularly in health and education. She is currently also the Chair of the board at the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) operational HQ in Amsterdam which has governance over programming decisions for their portfolio of humanitarian response projects globally as well as an elected trustee of MSF UK.   

Mark Hiram

Mark Hiram began working with the Nauru Utilities Corporation since 2008 as a Technician. For more than 10 years as a Technician, he has devoted most of his time as part of a team involved in operating and maintaining the RO plants with all its auxiliary. During his time with Nauru Utilities, Mark worked his way up and became the Team Leader whereby his primary role was taking lead in problem solving situations and ensuring effective and efficient operations of the Desalination Plant Operation.

Ben Furmage

Ben is the founding CEO of Water Sensitive Cities Australia, continuing his work from his time as CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC), where he also served as the Chief Operating and Finance Officer. He leads multidisciplinary projects on water-sensitive city approaches. Before CRCWSC, Ben spent ten years on Melbourne Water’s executive team, handling water resource and sewerage system planning, regulation, customer service, public affairs, and research and development.

Lyndon DeSalvo

Lyndon works to advance NBS in cities and communities to maximize outcomes for people and nature. He leads efforts to implement and scale nature-based and green infrastructure projects that improve water quality and provide local communities with climate resilience and other co-benefits. He collaborates closely with government agencies and the water sector, including utilities, researchers, and policymakers. Lyndon is a city and environmental planner who can work at multiple scales, from watershed-wide planning to site-specific design.

Erik Spiro-Larrea

Erik is a senior project lead for TNC’s Nature for Water Facility, a specialist team that helps local programs analyze, develop, and execute NBS for water security. Erik led Nature for Water’s first project and has since directly supported 15 NBS programs worldwide with various detailed analyses. As a trained economist, he typically focuses on return on investment, economics, sustainable finance, and governance, as well as developing “program intelligence” analyses and dashboards. Before joining TNC, Erik worked at Pegasys, a management consultancy based in Cape Town.