Urban water security is crucial for achieving sustainable development, peace, and human health and well-being. Framing urban water security is challenging due to the complexity and uncertainty of its definition and assessment framework. Several studies have assessed water security in widely divergent ways by granting priority indicators equal weight without considering or adapting to local conditions. This dissertation develops a new urban water security definition and assessment framework applicable to water scarce cities, with a focus on Madaba, Jordan. It takes a novel and systematic approach to assessing urban water security and culminates in integrated urban water security index (IUWSI) as a diagnostic tool and guide management actions. The dissertation suggests a new working definition of urban water security based on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 on safe drinking water for all and the human rights on water and sanitation as follows: The dynamic capacity of water systems and stakeholders to safeguard sustainable and equitable access to water of adequate quantity and acceptable quality that is continuously, physically and legally available at an affordable cost for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being and socioeconomic development, ensuring protection against waterborne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability. This proposed definition captures issues at the urban level of technical, environmental and socioeconomic indicators that emphasize credibility, legitimacy and salience. The assessment framework establishes a criteria hierarchy, consisting of four main dimensions to achieve urban water security: drinking water and human well-being, ecosystem, climate change and water-related hazards and socioeconomic aspects (together, DECS). The framework enables the analysis of relationships and trade-offs between urbanization, water security and DECS indicators. The dissertation also provides a structured analysis to understand how urban water is managed in intermittent water supply system, by conducting a water balance analysis after quantifying the components of water losses in Madaba’s water distribution network. The findings showed that Madaba's non-revenue water (NRW) amounted to annual loss of about 3.5 million m3, corresponding to financial losses of 2.8 million USD to the utility, of which 1.7 million USD is the cost of real losses. The dissertation provided an intervention strategy for strengthening infrastructure resilience and reducing leakage via the infrastructure, repair, economic, awareness and pressure (IREAP) framework. The IREAP framework provides a robust strategy to shift intermittent water supply (IWS) into continuous water supply. The IUWSI highlighted the state of water security in Madaba, Jordan and identified the means of implementation to move towards achieving urban water security based on the priorities for Madaba. The drinking water and human wellbeing dimension was the most important priority, receiving a weight of 66.22%, followed by ecosystem (17.15%), socioeconomic aspects (10.18%), and climate change and water-related hazards (6.45%) dimensions. The IUWSI indicated that the urban water security in Madaba is reasonable with a score of 2.5/5 and can meet the minimum requirements in several dimensions, but nonetheless, it has many loopholes to cover. Gaps are clear in the climate change and water-related hazards, and socioeconomic dimensions with scores of 1.6/5 and 2.237/5 respectively. Additionally, specific shortcomings are found in indicators such as water availability, reliability, diversity, and public health. The IUWSI framework assists with a rational and evidence-based decision-making process, which is important for enhancing water resource management in water-scarce cities

This book deals with issues and concerns for the human environment in the developing countries incorporating natural processes and systems, pollution removal technology, energy conservation, environmental impact assessment process, economics, culture, political structure and societal equity from a management point of view. Solutions to the emerging problems of the environment need a paradigmatic shift in approach from a process based model to a socio-political-economic model. Hence environmental management should involve equality and control over use of the finite natural resources and the balance between Earth’s biocapacity and humanity’s ecological footprint. Changes such as green technologies, human population stabilization and adoption of ecologically harmonious lifestyles are absolutely essential and will require redesigning of political institutions, policies and revisiting forgotten skills of sustainable practices of environmental management. These challenges should centre on environment governance using the concepts of common property, equity and security. This book is relevant for academics, professionals, administrators and policy makers who are concerned with various aspects of environment management and governance.

Understanding the impacts of urbanization on the urban water cycle and managing the associated health risks demand adequate strategies and measures. Health risks associated with urban water systems and services include the microbiological and chemical contamination of urban waters and outbreak of water-borne diseases, mainly due to poor water and s

This document was prepared as a supplement to the Asian Water Development Outlook 2016. It provides background information and explanatory notes on the approach taken, assumptions made, and data used. The methodology itself has been developed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in cooperation with reputed scientific institutes who have co-authored the individual reports for each of the five key dimensions of water security. These five reports are integrated into this methodology report. This study was supported by ADB's Water Financing Partnership Facility.

This Research Topic is a part of the Delft 2021: 1st Sociohydrology Conference series. To view the other sessions please follow the links below: Innovating a New Knowledge Base for Water Justice Studies: Hydrosocial, Sociohydrology, and Beyond Scale Issues in Human-Water Systems Water Resources and Human Behavior: Analysis and Modeling of Coupled Water-Human Systems Feedbacks and Coevolution Innovative Sensing, Observing, Measuring and Analysing Human-Water Data “Pluralistic water research” integrates the hydrological and the social to provide sustainable solutions to water crises. While relying upon robust quantitative modelling, sociohydrology captures crises across many waters (surface, ground and interstitial) along quantity and quality dimensions, hydrosocial unfurls power hierarchies in access to safe and required quota of water, be it for drinking or irrigation purposes. The success of engineering solutions laying out “hard” interventions such as solar powered irrigation, dams, high yielding crop varieties, water treatment plants and water distributions and purifications depend on “soft” socio-political, cultural and psychological variables like the political landscape, community behaviours and governance arrangements. How these soft parameters limit or advance the effect of hard interventions await more enhanced modelling and place-based qualitative analyses to disentangle various cause-effect pathways. While historical and process-based sociohydrology accommodates detailed temporal datasets and causal relationships across human-water systems, the hydrosocial paradigm reconciles “non-modern”, anti-hegemonic, water techniques and knowledge systems, animating local agencies within specific hydroscapes. This issue is dedicated to capture real time innovations through which water challenges have been confronted. It intends to unravel “storylines” along actionable water projects, reflecting on mediations across multiple actors and networks in specific spatio-temporal and cultural contexts, finally drawing our attention to the correlation between projected promises and actual realities. Situated at the crossroads of “boundary work”, we invite articles that will deploy a range of interdisciplinary frameworks like RANAS (Risk, Attitude, Norms, Ability, and Self-regulation), APIE (Awareness, Participation, Involvement and Engagement), HUPE (Historical Urban Political Ecology), etc. to demonstrate coupled sociohydrological and hydrosocial realties and in turn getting informed by empirical insights emanating from these actual water interventions. The final aim of the special issue is not to showcase water just actual interventions but to elicit a rigorous mapping of sustainable processes facilitating collective co-production of resilient water trajectories.

In the 21st Century, the world will see an unprecedented migration of people moving from rural to urban areas. With global demand for water projected to outstrip supply in the coming decades, cities will likely face water insecurity as a result of climate change and the various impacts of urbanisation. Traditionally, urban water managers have relied on large-scale, supply-side infrastructural projects to meet increased demands for water; however, these projects are environmentally, economically and politically costly. Urban Water Security argues that cities need to transition from supply-side to demand-side management to achieve urban water security. This book provides readers with a series of in-depth case studies of leading developed cities, of differing climates, incomes and lifestyles from around the world, that have used demand management tools to modify the attitudes and behaviour of water users in an attempt to achieve urban water security. Urban Water Security will be of particular interest to town and regional planners, water conservation managers and policymakers, international companies and organisations with large water footprints, environmental and water NGOs, researchers, graduate and undergraduate students.

This book presents water insecurity issues in urban areas while developing a water security index and explores the innovative approaches to water development and management with examples from Asian cities. The urban water crisis is a global phenomenon, but it is more obvious in the megacities of the developing world. Urban drought, although not a familiar term, will pose a significant threat to humankind in the near future, especially in the context of increasing population in cities. Many cities are already unable to provide safe, clean water for their citizens. Some of the world’s largest cities depend heavily on groundwater for their water supply. It is unlikely that dependence on aquifers, which take many years to recharge, will be sustainable. As urban populations grow, water use will need to shift from agriculture to municipal and industrial uses, making decisions about allocating between different sectors difficult. Inefficient water-use practices by households and industries, fragmented management of water between sectors and institutions, climate-induced water shortages, environmental degradation of water sources, and inadequate use of alternate sources are also issues of major concern. Despite recent advances in the literature, there exists a considerable gap in attempting an integrated water-resource management approach. Covering all aspects of urban drought and water insecurity, this book is a valuable resource for students, researchers, academics, policy makers, and development practitioners.