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Abstract Climate change is a management and governance challenge requiring diverse potential responses. This article highlights the critical role public managers play in navigating the response diversity of such governance systems. Response diversity is the rule‐based set of options available for responding to unexpected service disruptions and is distinguished from ambiguity, which holds a negative valence within public administration. We first develop theoretical propositions about how institutions influence response diversity, drawing on public administration, resilience, and cognitive science research. Then, we use the Institutional Grammar and Institutional Network Analysis tools to empirically trace the rate‐making processes in two U.S. urban water utilities. We conclude that institutional designs do distinctively influence response diversity and are therefore key for evaluating the climate adaptability of heavily engineered infrastructure systems. Specifically, we identify important differences in the diversity of information, participation, and heuristics used for selecting investment strategies. 

The Urban Water Infrastructure Investment Model (UWIIM) is a discrete time dynamical systems model designed to reflect the general flow of water, investment, and information in a stylized urban water coupled infrastructure system. The model couples operational considerations regarding the use of infrastructure, including storage, processing, and delivery infrastructure to meet annual demand given varying, user-defined, hydrologic inflows with political-economic considerations at play in three annual decisions: short-term (with a year) curtailment of demand, investment in infrastructure, and rate-setting. We demonstrate the model with representative configurations for three Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) cities: Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Queen Creek. A detailed description of the model can be found in the attached Supporting Information document. The model uses the Julia programming language (version 1.8.4). The resources published here allow users to (i.) run the UWIIM for each of the three PMA cities and vary the parameters or initial conditions used and (ii.) replicate the sensitivity analysis performed in the referenced manuscript. Both tasks can be performed with the Jupyter notebooks or Julia code contained in the source code file. We also provide the raw outputs from the sensitivity analysis and R scripts used to produce the analysis figures displayed in the manuscript. 

Abstract In complex, polycentric environmental governance systems, actors may choose to collaborate with one another to reduce their collective vulnerability and enhance system function. However, collaboration can be costly, and little evidence exists for how particular collaborative forums impact the broader governance system in which they are embedded. To address this gap, we investigate the role of intermediate collaborative forums, which support collaboration among a subset of system actors, in polycentric governance systems. Empirically, we analyze the structural and functional role of an intermediate collaborative forum called the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) within the municipal surface water governance network for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) in Arizona, United States. To do this, we draw from 21 interviews with water professionals in the PMA, which we analyze through a combination of network analysis and qualitative coding. We find that AMWUA facilitates strong bonding capacities among members, allowing for streamlined bridging to the rest of the network that enhances information processing and advocacy of member needs. Our findings advance theory on the role of collaboration in polycentric systems and inform the design of collaborative institutions to improve environmental governance. 

Urban water systems across the United States are facing a variety of challenges to existing supply and demand dynamics. Responding to these challenges and working toward sustainability in these complex socio-environmental systems (SES) requires integrating various types of information – ranging from hydrologic data to political considerations and beyond – into policy and management decisions. However, the design of institutions, i.e. the formal rules in which urban water utilities are embedded, impact the flow of various types of information, especially across diverse actor groups critical to developing and implementing policy. Drawing on a neuroscience-informed Bayesian application of the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, this study examines the institutional designs of two urban U.S. water systems. It aims to advance our understanding of these systems by: A) theoretically linking cognitive science and its action-oriented predictive processing approach to the institutional configurations that shape collective-action; and B) identifying potential institutional dependencies and voids that may limit the use of formalized climate-related guidance in systems facing increased risks. We utilize process-tracing along with an institutional analysis approach called the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) to parse the institutions into their semantic and syntactic components, identifying institutional dependencies, voids, or conflicts which may influence long-range performance of the systems. Our findings have important implications for the (re)design of institutions that better facilitate the flow of information among key policy actors and support policy changes that promote sustainable long-term urban water supply. 

Abstract Designing urban water systems to respond to the accelerating and unpredictable changes of the Anthropocene will require changes not only to built infrastructure and operating rules, but also to the governance arrangements responsible for investing in them. Yet, inclusion of thispolitical‐economic feedbackin dynamic models of infrastructure systems and socio‐hydrology has lagged behindoperationalfeedback concerns. We address this gap through a dynamical systems application of the Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, which provides the conceptual building blocks for analyzing social‐ecological systems through various classes of infrastructure and the flows of material and information among them. In the model, political‐economic feedback involves three decisions—infrastructure investment, rate‐setting, and short‐term demand curtailment—and each decision is constrained by institutional friction, the aggregation of decision and transaction costs associated with taking action. We apply the model to three cities in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area to compare how institutional friction interacts with a city's water resource portfolio and financial position to determine its sensitivity, or the degree to which its performance (e.g., providing sufficient supply to meet demand) changes given reductions in Colorado River water availability. We find that the slowing effect of institutional friction on investment and rate‐setting decisions can increase the sensitivity of a city's supply, but it can also promote objectives that compete with over‐response (e.g., rate burden). The effect is dependent on the initial operating capacity of the CIS and flexibility within the institutions, highlighting the need to consider political‐economic and operational feedback together when evaluating infrastructure systems.