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It's one of the globe's most highly contested resources and a new Federally-funded UWA research hub is meeting the challenge of charting smart ways to use water more sustainably in the world's driest continent.

It was the river with its black swans and riverine vegetation that attracted Captain James Stirling and his pioneering party in 1827 when they sailed in cutter and gig from its mouth to the foothills of the Darling Range.

Known to Noongar people as Derbarl Yerrigan, it would become the Swan to early settlers and it would prove to be an invaluable transport artery for the timber, wool and wine that were early exports from the fledgling Swan River Colony.

Fast-forward almost two hundred years, and the river remains one of our capital city's great assets, but the catchments that once replenished it and remnant wetlands are being challenged by the demands of a growing capital city, by thirsty industries and a drying climate.

Western Australia is particularly challenged by climate change modelling that predicts even drier conditions for the State's south-west by 2030. Research signals that runoff into reservoirs and irrigation dams is shrinking; that the water table is falling, that wetlands are drying out and industries such as mining, agriculture and horticulture are facing rising water prices. Western Australia was the nation's first in adopting seawater desalination and plants in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales have followed.

Variations of these problems are shared by cities across the world. Water is becoming one of the globe's most contested resources and its sustainable use is exercising the minds of scientists and governments. It's a challenge that can only be addressed by bringing together the best minds across disciplines within universities, industries and governments - and it is this realisation that has spurred the Federal Government to provide a decade of funding for the Co-operative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, with nodes in WA, Victoria and Queensland, and a network of government and industry partners.

The Australian Government has identified the reform of urban water systems and the creation of liveable, sustainable and productive cities as a national priority. To meet this challenge it is funding a CRC that brings together water engineers, urban planners and ecologists, climate and social scientists, water economists - and leading researchers from other relevant disciplines - to work on 21 priority projects.

Our State and this University are widely acknowledged as being at the forefront of water-related sciences, so while the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities is headquartered in Melbourne, its WA node is run by Professor Anas Ghadouani (School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering) who is also the Executive Director of the CRC's multi-disciplinary research teams from UWA, Monash and the University of Queensland. And the researchers are working with Federal, State and local governments agencies, 25 across WA alone.

"When you look at the world's top 10 most liveable cities, you'll find Perth and Melbourne up there, so we're doing some things really well, however our challenges tend to revolve around water," says Professor Ghadouani, a water scientist/engineer with impressive international credentials. Born in Morocco where he began his studies, he completed his PhD at Canada's University of Montreal and the University of Alberta. Joining UWA in 2003, he is a member of several government water-related bodies and is a Visiting Professor at universities in Canada and the People's Republic of China.

"My interest centres on how to transition our cities to become water-sustainable, how to change the way we manage and use water," says the UWA researcher. "We spend extraordinary amounts providing access to clean water, but we can be far more innovative in using it: by creating aesthetic features that mitigate urban heat; by harvesting stormwater through novel bio-filters; by retrofitting established cities; by finding acceptable solutions to the wastewater recovery and changing community attitudes to water use."

The CRC's strength is its ability to draw on thought-leaders in all these areas while tackling the challenge of navigating the labyrinthine layers of governance that can impede the adoption of innovative technology and creative solutions.

"This CRC is unique in that it links researchers across 20 disciplines," says Professor Ghadouani. "For the first time ever we have psychologists, lawyers, economists, environmentalists, engineers, computer scientists, architects, landscape architects, population health and the humanities researchers talking with one another and with industry leaders and government planners. We believe that integrating urban design, social science, planning and engineering will produce the best outcomes.

"Our aim - it's ambitious but achievable - is to deliver transformative change in the way we design our cities. By 2050, about 80 per cent of the world's people will be living in cities, so we have to do better: to retrofit existing cities and to better plan new ones to soak up that extraordinary growth."

In WA, Geraldton will serve as an ‘incubator' for some of the CRC's initiatives, and researchers hope it will serve as a model of how regional centres can evolve to become water sensitive.

A large number of researchers from UWA are involved in addition to more than 20 research fellows and PhD candidates.

While tackling some the nation's water challenges may be technical, engineers involved will also get an insight into the history of our nation's approach to water use. UWA researchers Professor Jenny Gregory and Dr Ruth Morgan are among the CRC's team of historians piecing together the water histories of Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth through changing infrastructure and cultural attitudes.

When Professor Ghadouani presented the 2014 George Seddon memorial Lecture Water for Society, he highlighted the importance of bringing concepts such as "the sense of place" (identified by researchers such as the late George Seddon) to the design of our cities. "We believe we are better placed today to use the innovations in water engineering, sociotechnical modelling, economics and urban design to deliver to our communities on the broad concepts of sense of place and liveability," he said.

The CRC offers courses and workshops that - in this State - have already attracted around 180 participants. For details of its 2015 program, visit the website watersensitivecities.org.au or phone 08 6488 4547. A full list of 83 current participants can be found on the CRC website (watersensitivecities.org.au/about-the-crc/participants). The CRC has international participants in Singapore, the Netherlands, Austria, and Denmark. A collaboration with researchers working on similar projects in Stanford University will see a delegation from UWA and Stanford exchanging their findings under the recently announced strategic alliance.