Utilities

Utilities are urban objects that form critical infrastructures, needed for maintaining the essential support for sustaining the standard of living.

Description

Utilities in an urban context are formed by facilities for:

Utility type	Description	Icon
Water	Utilities providing essential drinking water services to the different land uses within the urban environment, including residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Such utilities and the associated infrastructure are often owned and managed by the state, with day-to-day maintenance coordinated by the local authority or muncipality.
Waste	Utilities to facilitate the treatment of wastewater and sewage from residential, commercial and other premises throughout the urban environment and surrounding hinterland (more rural locations may have individual domestic systems). Such utilities are often highly sensitive to the environment and must be carefully planned and designed.
Energy	Electricity, fuel and gas utilities that generate, transmit and/or distribute to all urban objects. Energy provision is an essential requirement for a functioning society and economy.

As can be seen from the table above, within Urban Securipedia, the utilities that are focussed on are water, waste and energy utilities, while transportation networks are described under a unique category of urban object. Urban Securipedia also has dedicated pages on public health and government services (see: )

TO BE COMPLETED...

• Telecommunication
• Financial services ()
• Security services

Functions

Economic

Since most of the utility services (e.g. water, waste, energy) are essential for the quality of life, they are integral to household, commercial and industrial productivity, and hence the creation of welfare. Utilities create direct economic impact as a result of the production of utility goods, but also have an direct and indirect impact on the urban environment in terms of land use, habitat fragmentation, noise and smell generation, air pollution, a change in the quality of surface water, etc. These effects have also economic impacts.

Utilities have to deal with several security issues, ranging from theft, vandalism, assaults, and the looming threat of terrorism. Especially large scale criminal and terrorist threats can cause catastrophic economic damage since so many individuals and companies depend on it. Most utility infrastructure, however, is many years old, and is not built with today’s security in mind. Hence, if there is one type of urban object that can use serious security measures, it is utilities, and due to the integral role with economic productivity in the urban environment, these security measures have a large indirect economic impact, the so-called economic impact of security threats. In addition, due to the need of space, utilities are in many cases located in the more remote areas of a city, creating specific security issues.