Partner Programme
City-scale decision support. Water, energy, food, waste and municipal finance in one connected evidence base that stays current.
The challenge
Urban services are run sector by sector. Water, energy, waste, finance and spatial planning each have their own department, their own datasets and their own investment process. This is the norm everywhere, and it does deliver clear lines of accountability. It also carries a real cost.
Managing sector by sector obscures the dependencies between services. Water lost through a network is also energy and revenue lost. Waste that is not recovered accumulates in the channels that must carry stormwater away. Costs and risks get shifted quietly from one part of a city to another, investment opportunities are missed, and an intervention that looks effective in one department creates new pressure in the next. The information needed to see any of this sits apart, in the very moment it matters most.
The Water-Energy-Food Decision-Support Tool integrates the data that is normally held separately, automates the analysis that connects it, and keeps it current as conditions change. It is delivered by the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University, with ComplexCity Digital as implementation partner and GCX as technical partner.
What it covers
Deployment is co-designed with city officials and begins with whatever data exists. Incomplete records are a starting condition, not a barrier.
Water, energy, food, waste and carbon mapped across administrative zones and scales, with costs attached, so the effect of changing conditions is quantified rather than assumed.
Supply, treatment, distribution, consumption, physical losses and the revenue implications of each, which is where most municipal water systems leak value fastest.
How solar, storage, efficient pumping and hybrid solutions affect operating cost, reliability and emissions, tested before capital is committed.
Who is served, who is underserved, and how tariff design can be used deliberately as an instrument of equity while keeping the system financially sustainable.
Climate and remote-sensing data brought to bear on the city's specific geography, so risk is understood spatially rather than as an aggregate figure.
Where reduced losses, lower energy costs, improved billing and better asset planning generate savings, recoverable revenue or an investable case.
How it runs
Scope is agreed jointly with city officials before implementation begins.
What that means
The platform is configured to the city's priorities while officials are trained on it.
What that means
Scenario analysis, diagnostics, and evidence funders can act on.
What that means
The programme is grant funded and offered to a small group of African cities, with no financial contribution required from participating municipalities.
Enquire about participation →How it fits
The WEF-DST does for a municipality what DASH does for an organisation: pull resource, cost and emissions data out of the silos it lives in, connect it, keep it current, and turn it into something a decision can rest on. The scale is different, the buyer is different, and the funding model is entirely different, but the underlying discipline is the same one GCX has been practising for two decades.
That is why GCX is technical partner rather than a subcontractor. The method was proven at precinct scale before being applied to a full South African metropolitan dataset, accounting across a single year for hundreds of millions of kilolitres of water, millions of megawatt-hours of energy, all formal food flows and millions of tonnes of emissions, resolved from city level down to suburb.
The first step is a short session to map priorities, existing data and access arrangements. Scope, responsibilities and outputs are agreed jointly before any implementation begins.