Department Environmental Social Sciences

COMIX: Challenges and Opportunities of Modular water Infrastructures for Greening the Swiss Economy

The Comix project examined the challenges and opportunities of modular infrastructure systems for the Swiss economy and society. The analysis focused on the example of urban water management.

The Comix project was part of the SNF NRP73 funding program on Sustainable Swiss Economy and ran from January 2018 to December 2021.

Problem setting

The Comix project set out with the aim to analyze opportunities and challenges of a more sustainable Swiss economy, which is associated with a foreseeable fundamental shift towards more modular system designs in many infrastructure sectors. The analysis primarily focused on the Swiss urban water management sector, scrutinizing impacts on Swiss industry, utilities, professional associations and regulators. The case of urban water management is particularly well suited to analyze these challenges due to strong path dependencies and considerable impacts on sustainable futures globally. In Switzerland in particular, urban water infrastructures are generally well equipped to deal with the current situation. However, in the near future, challenges, such as climate change with intensive flooding as well as increased urbanization, can put pressure on the current systems in the form of sewer overflows. Therefore, the core research questions that was analyzed in the project relate to in how far the challenges and opportunities of modular infrastructures could represent a first mover advantage for Swiss industry and a strategic chance to anticipate future system configurations for Swiss operators and regulators and in how far synergies between these two aspects could be identified. Ultimately, the aim was to form a hypothesis about the so-called lead market potential of Switzerland in this sector.

Project Structure

The project was subdivided into two research streams and a synthesis module. The first stream aimed at understanding opportunities for Swiss water companies in the context of global industry dynamics associated with modular water technologies, assessing success conditions at both innovation systems and at industry level. The second stream set out to identify challenges and opportunities that modular infrastructures represent for utilities, professional associations, consultancies and government departments, which are responsible for planning and operating UWM structures. More specifically, the project planned to conduct an encompassing cost benefit analyses of alternative transition scenarios from today’s mostly centralized system configuration towards future more hybrid forms. Furthermore, alternative governance structures, including the role of policy instruments and different actors that could enable implementing and operating hybrid system configurations at a similar level of performance like the incumbent system needed to be elaborated and assessed. Through a synthesis module, the results from the two analytical streams could be integrated, assessing the lead market potential.

Practical relevance

For this purpose, Comix was conceived as an inter- and transdisciplinary project run by research teams from various disciplines such as management, economic geography, political science, economics and engineering. Additionally, representatives from industry, utilities, professional associations and government were to be involved in several sequences of participative workshops. Through these workshops, Comix co-develop future scenarios for enabling more hybrid water systems with implications and potential solutions for practice and politics.

Major outputs for practice experts

A major output of this collaborative work, was the “position paper” on the future relevance of modular water systems for the Swiss urban water management sector, which you can find here:

Truffer, B., Elbel, R.; Heiberg, J.; Lieberherr, E.; Maurer, M.; Müller, Pakizer, K. 2022. Perspektiven modularer Abwassersysteme in der Schweiz. Skizzierung einer Umsetzungsstrategie.


Several articles were published in the professional magazine Aqua & Gas:

Lieberherr, E.; Pakizer, K. 2022. Implementierung modularer Abwasserinfrastrukturen. Müssen Politik, Verwaltung und Management auf den Kopf gestellt werden? Aqua & Gas, No. 10.

Müller, A.; Elbel, R. 2022. Modulare Kleinkläranlagen. Lohnt es sich.
Aqua & Gas, No. 9, s. 66 – 69.

Eine globale Schweizer Wasserpolitik. Internationale Verhandlungen zum Nachhaltigkeitsziel 6 und dessen Umsetzung im Ausland

Das Nachhaltigkeitsziel 6 (SDG 6) der Vereinten Nationen (Uno) verlangt die «Verfügbarkeit und nachhaltige Bewirtschaftung von Wasser und die Sicherstellung sanitärer Einrichtungen für alle». Der Artikel analysiert, wieso die Schweiz bei den internationalen Verhandlungen um das SDG 6 eine wichtige Rolle spielen wollte und konnte. Seit der Verabschiedung setzen sich zwischen 50 und 100 Schweizer Akteure mit der Umsetzung des SDG 6 im globalen Süden auseinander. Wie vernetzt sie sind, und welche Herausforderungen dabei bestehen, wird ebenfalls nachfolgend aufgezeigt.
Mathys, N.; Pärli, R.; Fischer, M.; Lieberherr, E. (2019) Eine globale Schweizer Wasserpolitik. Internationale Verhandlungen zum Nachhaltigkeitsziel 6 und dessen Umsetzung im Ausland, Aqua & Gas, 99(5), 24-28, Institutional Repository

Modulare Wasserinfrastrukturen. Optionen für eine Zukunftsfähige Siedlungswasserwirtschaft

Modulare Systeme ermöglichen eine dezentralere und damit flexiblere Gestaltung der Siedlungswasserwirtschaft. Im Rahmen des Nationalen Forschungsprogramms 73 «Nachhaltige Wirtschaft» untersuchte das Forschungsteam des Projekts COMIX die zu erwartenden Chancen und Risiken, die sich aus diesen Entwicklungen für einen nachhaltigeren Umgang mit der Ressource Wasser in der Schweiz ergeben könnten.
Truffer, B.; Maurer, M.; Heiberg, J. (2022) Modulare Wasserinfrastrukturen. Optionen für eine Zukunftsfähige Siedlungswasserwirtschaft, Aqua & Gas, 102(9), 60-65, Institutional Repository

Major academic outputs

Assessing transitions through socio-technical configuration analysis – a methodological framework and a case study in the water sector

Classic accounts of transitions research have predominantly built on reconstructions of historical transition processes and in-depth case studies to identify and conceptualize socio-technical change. While such approaches have substantively improved our understanding of transitions, they often suffer from methodological nationalism and a lack of generalizability beyond spatial and sectoral boundaries. To address this gap, we propose a novel methodology – socio-technical configuration analysis (STCA) – to map and measure socio-technical alignment processes across time and space. STCA provides a configurational and dynamic perspective on how social and technical elements get aligned into "configurations that work", allowing for the identification of differentiated transition trajectories at and across spatial and sectoral contexts. The methodology's value is illustrated with the empirical case of an ongoing shift from centralized to more modular infrastructure configurations in the global water sector. Building on this illustration, we outline potential contributions of STCA to configurational theorizing in transition studies, sketching the contours of what we believe could become a generative epistemological approach for this field.
Heiberg, J.; Truffer, B.; Binz, C. (2022) Assessing transitions through socio-technical configuration analysis – a methodological framework and a case study in the water sector, Research Policy, 51(1), 104363 (19 pp.), doi:10.1016/j.respol.2021.104363, Institutional Repository

The Geography of technology legitimation: how multiscalar institutional dynamics matter for path creation in emerging industries

Research in economic geography has recently been challenged to adopt more institutional and multiscalar perspectives on industrial path development. This article contributes to this debate by integrating insights from (evolutionary) economic geography as well as transition and innovation studies into a conceptual framework of how path creation in emerging industries depends on the availability of both knowledge and legitimacy. Unlike the extant literature, we argue here that not only the former but also the latter may substantially depend on nonlocal sources. Conceptually, we distinguish between multiscalar export, attraction, and absorption of legitimacy. Coupled with conventional knowledge indicators, this approach enables us to reconstruct how not only external knowledge sourcing but also multiscalar institutional dynamics contribute to a region or country’s ability to leverage its potential for path creation in an emerging industry. Methodologically, we develop legitimation indicators from a global media database, which was built around the case of modular water technologies. Cross-comparing the evidence from six key countries (India, Israel, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, the US) with differing path creation constellations for this emerging industry, allows us to hypothesize how multiscalar legitimation influences a country’s prospects for creating a radically new industrial path.
Heiberg, J.; Binz, C.; Truffer, B. (2020) The Geography of technology legitimation: how multiscalar institutional dynamics matter for path creation in emerging industries, Economic Geography, 96(5), 470-498, doi:10.1080/00130095.2020.1842189, Institutional Repository

Overcoming the harmony fallacy: how values shape the course of innovation systems

The technological innovation systems (TIS) framework is one of the dominant perspectives in transitions studies to analyze success conditions and system failures of newly emerging technologies and industries. So far, TIS studies mostly adopted a rather harmonious view on the values of actors and by this were unable to address competition, conflicts and, in particular, battles over diverging directionalities within the system. To empirically assess this potential “harmony fallacy”, we identify values as part of underlying institutional logics of major organizations in the field of modular water technologies in Switzerland by means of 26 expert interviews. We show how logics may condition collaboration patterns and technological preferences. This analysis inspires key conceptual tasks of innovation system analysis, like the identification of system failures, the setting of appropriate system boundaries and the formulation of better policy recommendations.
Heiberg, J.; Truffer, B. (2022) Overcoming the harmony fallacy: how values shape the course of innovation systems, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 42, 411-428, doi:10.1016/j.eist.2022.01.012, Institutional Repository

The emergence of a global innovation system – A case study from the urban water sector

Innovation studies is increasingly acknowledging the multi-scalar nature of the systemic contexts, in which innovations are being developed and deployed. This paper builds on and further develops a recently proposed framework for studying global innovation systems (GIS). It aims at explaining the emergence of a GIS by outlining the specific local resource-related conditions that lead to the creation of structural couplings, i.e. actors, networks and institutions that allow for multi-scalar resource flows. Deploying a qualitative case study, the paper investigates the interrelated developments of eight demonstration sites of innovative wastewater treatment technology in North-Western Europe. It shows how resource-related deficits lead actors to draw on resources generated outside of their local context. The paper contributes to the literature on the Geography of Transitions by highlighting the importance of resource complementarities among different local contexts, as well as the crucial role of trans-local systemic intermediaries in shaping an emergent GIS.
Heiberg, J.; Truffer, B. (2022) The emergence of a global innovation system – A case study from the urban water sector, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 43, 270-288, doi:10.1016/j.eist.2022.04.007, Institutional Repository

A research agenda for the future of urban water management: exploring the potential of non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid solutions

Recent developments in high- and middle-income countries have exhibited a shift from conventional urban water systems to alternative solutions that are more diverse in source separation, decentralization, and modularization. These solutions include non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid systems to address such pressing global challenges as climate change, eutrophication, and rapid urbanization. They close loops, recover valuable resources, and adapt quickly to changing boundary conditions such as population size. Moving to such alternative solutions requires both technical and social innovations to co-evolve over time into integrated socio-technical urban water systems. Current implementations of alternative systems in high- and middle-income countries are promising, but they also underline the need for research questions to be addressed from technical, social, and transformative perspectives. Future research should apply a transdisciplinary research approach through socio-technical "lighthouse" projects that apply alternative urban water systems at scale. Such research should leverage experience from lighthouse projects in a range of socio-economic contexts, identify their potentials and limitations from an integrated perspective, and share their successes and failures across the urban water sector.
Hoffmann, S.; Feldmann, U.; Bach, P. M.; Binz, C.; Farrelly, M.; Frantzeskaki, N.; Hiessl, H.; Inauen, J.; Larsen, T. A.; Lienert, J.; Londong, J.; Lüthi, C.; Maurer, M.; Mitchell, C.; Morgenroth, E.; Nelson, K. L.; Scholten, L.; Truffer, B.; Udert, K. M. (2020) A research agenda for the future of urban water management: exploring the potential of non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid solutions, Environmental Science and Technology, 54(9), 5312-5322, doi:10.1021/acs.est.9b05222, Institutional Repository

Policy instrument mixes for operating modular technology within hybrid water systems

Water systems are experiencing dynamic societal demands and extreme environmental changes. The integration of modular water systems into existing centralized infrastructures, creating hybrid systems, could mitigate these challenges by enabling more resilient water management. However, the existence of technological alternatives has not changed the continuous reliance on centralized water infrastructure. Supportive policy instruments are key to foster the operation of modular technology within hybrid water systems. This article focuses on the role of substantive and procedural policy instruments for the successful operation of modular water systems within a hybrid water infrastructure. Based on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we can confirm the claim in the literature that relying on regulatory instruments is relevant for operating modular technology within hybrid systems. However, we also find combinations of policy instruments where regulatory instruments do not matter. Furthermore, we find that procedural instruments emphasizing stakeholder participation interplay with different substantive policy instruments to support the successful operation of modular systems.
Pakizer, K.; Fischer, M.; Lieberherr, E. (2020) Policy instrument mixes for operating modular technology within hybrid water systems, Environmental Science and Policy, 105, 120-133, doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2019.12.009, Institutional Repository

Miörner J., Truffer T., Binz C., Heiberg J. & Yap X.-S. (2022) Guidebook for applying the Socio-Technical Configuration Analysis method. GEIST – Geography of Innovation and Sustainability Transitions 2022(01), GEIST Working Paper series.

Pakizer, Katrin; Lieberherr, Eva (05.12.2018), Alternative governance arrangements for modular water infrastructure: An exploratory review, in Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, 19(1-2), 53 - 68, DOI: 10.1177/1783591718814426

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