SOSX®, AI-enabled systems thinking, for any sector.
The SOSX book series
The Whole Water System
For utilities facing coupled challenges
Written for strategy, asset-management and regulation teams in water and other regulated utilities. It accompanies SOSX for Utilities.
A companion to Seeing the Whole System, applied to the organisations that run civilisation's least visible machinery: water companies first, because water is where the coupling is starkest, and regulated utilities generally, because the structures are the same.
It opens with the question you cannot currently ask (the kind that cuts across assets, catchments, customers, finances and regulation at once), and makes the case that a utility's long-horizon challenges are systemically coupled, so they have to be reasoned about together. From there: stocks that outlive careers, delay as the cruellest feature of infrastructure systems, resilience as a shape rather than a score, and what it would mean to talk to a regulator with a model rather than a binder.
The shape is the series' shape: the coupled system first, then the practice, then the machine. Part II is fourteen chapters of method the sector already recognises, soft systems methodology for a genuine mess, parameterising with provenance because every number will be interrogated, forecasting that is never a bare number, scenarios, families and adaptive pathways for the 25-year question, whole-life cost with social value, prioritising investment systemically, and resilience read as a shape rather than a score. Part III comes last: what the machine does, and SOSX for Utilities, a utility's own network, from source to customer, as one living model.
It is written for strategy, asset-management and regulation teams, and readers from energy networks and other regulated infrastructure are explicitly welcome, because almost nothing in these pages depends on the liquid in the pipe. It stands on its own; you do not need the central book first, though the two are better together.
Inside the book
Part I, The utility as a coupled system
Chapters 1–9. The operating system of a utility; the ring of challenges that refuses to be a list; how regulated infrastructure behaves; stocks that outlive careers; delay, the cruellest feature of infrastructure systems; how crises compound; the temptation to model only what you own; the utility inside the utility; and the iceberg of incidents, patterns, structures and beliefs.
Part II, The practice
Chapters 10–23. Map the whole operating system in two workshops; soft systems methodology, the method for a genuine mess; parameterise with provenance, because every number will be interrogated; forecasting honestly, never a bare number; the 25-year question, scenarios, families and adaptive pathways; the numbers you do not have and the uncertainty you cannot dodge; whole-life cost, discounting and social value; prioritising investment systemically; the risk register that earns its place; resilience as a shape rather than a score; the customer in the model; talking to regulators with a model; climate adaptation through systems eyes; and the ways utilities get this wrong.
Part III, The machine
Chapters 24–28. The six steps retold for a utility question; grounded research that survives a regulated review; the governance that makes AI analysis usable in one; method by method, what the machine carries; and SOSX for Utilities: a utility's own network, from source to customer, as one living model.
Part IV, One spine, many domains
Chapter 29. The same discipline, everywhere else: the survey that connects this book back to the rest of the series.
Plus a glossary and further reading in the appendices.
From the series’ shared figure library, the same illustrations you’ll find in the book.
And for the whole argument in one place, start with the central book: SOSX: Seeing the Whole System.