Title: Sustainable Water Management in an Urban Context
Abstract: The problem of urban water systems is examined with emphasis on sustainable management of water supply. In case of drought, water is a scarce resource, and sustainable management is of paramount importance. The availability of the existing freshwater resources within an urban area is constrained by the hydrophysical, technical, economic and institutional conditions of the system. These conditions determine the general availability of water in the area and have an effect on, both, the supply and the demand of fresh (drinking) water. In addition, they are affecting each other in a complex way such that the effect of introducing new technical, economic and/or institutional measures on water supply can not easily be assessed in advance. A reasonable management aspiration, which has become very popular in recent years, is to operate this system in a sustainable way. Related to sustainability are the concepts of dynamically balanced or healthily balanced system. This essentially means that water supply satisfies the needs of the society of the urban region without jeopardizing the long-term quality of the water resources and the environment in general. The goal of sustainable development addresses more the issue of the needs of the society rather than the desires of a few people or a single industry for increasing comfort. Relative to this concept is the definition of absolute and relative water scarcity. When water is absolutely scarce it limits the survival and/or development of an individual, a population, a society or an ecosystem. If it is relatively scarce, its limiting character can be overcome with technical, economical or institutional measures, usually at higher costs. Absolute scarcity of water is very rare, and most situations involve relative scarcity of various degrees of severity. Here, the challenge is to find the right balance of technical, economic and institutional measures that will guarantee satisfaction of the needs of society with the least consumption of the available water and environmental resources. Various technical, economic and institutional measures are described in the paper. In addition, case descriptions from regions with, both, water abundance and scarcity illustrate how these measures were applied in practice and how they affected the performance of the respective water supply systems.
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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