Toward a Watershed- and System of Systems–Oriented Perspective of Stormwater Management Enterprise Performance

Abstract

Public works decision and policy makers daily face myriad management problems. The problem of stormwater runoff management, for one, has for several decades received a great deal of attention, with much of that focused on reconciling the needs of natural watershed systems with those of the man-made physical and non-physicalsocietal systems that watersheds overlap. In other words, stormwater management has effectively been cast as a system of systems problem requiring a delicate balance among multiple natural and man-made systems. The authors propose a methodology with which stakeholders can first set and then realize expectations for stormwater management problems by using watershed- and system of systems–oriented perspectives. The methodology, Enterprise AID (assessment, improvement, and design) is particularly well suited to such a pairing of perspectives, and this article, therefore, shows how stakeholders in multiple and commonly disparate interests might best balance the stormwater management needs of watersheds and related societal constructs.