Designing Water Institutions

Water resources engineering entails the assessment, development and management of water resources - such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, groundwater, estuaries and coastal waters - for the benefit of mankind. Design of water resources systems presents a comprehensive coverage of the the design fundamentals of key elements of water resources engineering infrastructure.

Design of Water Quality Monitoring Systems Design of Water Quality Monitoring Systems presents a state-of-the-art approach to designing a water quality monitoring system that gets consistently valid results. It seeks to provide a strong scientific basis for monitoring that will enable readers to establish cost-effective environmental programs. The book begins by reviewing the evolution of water quality monitoring as an information system, and then defines water quality monitoring as a system, following the flow of information through six major components: sample collection, laboratory analysis, data handling, data analysis, reporting, and information utilization. The importance of statistics in obtaining useful information is discussed next, followed by the presentation of an overall approach to designing a total water quality information system. This sets the stage for a thorough examination of the quantification of information expectations, data analysis, network design, and the writing of the final design report. Several case studies describe the efforts of various organizations and individuals to design water quality monitoring systems using many of the concepts discussed here. A helpful summary and final system design checklist are also provided. Design of Water Quality Monitoring Systems will be an essential working tool for a broad range of managers, environmental scientists, chemists, toxicologists, regulators, and public officials involved in monitoring water quality. The volume will also be of great interest to professionals in government, industry, and academia concerned with establishing sound environmental programs.

"Rights to water are increasingly crucial and increasingly contested across theglobe. Urbanization, industrialization, environmental degradation, agriculturalintensification, rising per capita water use, increasing population, andother social, political, and economic transformations contribute to growing scarcity and demand for better management of water resources. In responding to these challenges, the world can draw on a rich heritage of institutions for regulating rights to water and resolving disputes, and a diversity of institutional arrangements that demonstrate great ingenuity in designing solutions to fit the conditions and priorities of various river basins. However, policy discussion in water management has often been impoverished by narrow polarization around a few idealized models of centrally integrated management or water commoditization, even though these comprise only a small and very incomplete subset of the institutional options available for effective management. The authors in this book expand the range of reflection and analysis of water rights reforms, offering insights aimed especially at those seeking practical pathways to improve equity, efficiency, and sustainability in access to water."

This book represents a landmark effort to probe and analyze the theory and empirics of designing water disaster management policies. It consists of seven chapters that examine, in-depth and comprehensively, issues that are central to crafting effective policies for water disaster management. The author uses historical surveys, institutional analysis, econometric investigations, empirical case studies, and conceptual-theoretical discussions to clarify and illuminate the complex policy process. The specific topics studied in this book include a review and analysis of key policy areas and research priority areas associated with water disaster management, community participation in disaster risk reduction, the economics and politics of ‘Green’ flood control, probabilistic flood forecasting for flood risk management, polycentric governance and flood risk management, drought management with the aid of dynamic inter-generational preferences, and how social resilience can inform SA/SIA for adaptive planning for climate change in vulnerable areas. A unique feature of this book is its analysis of the causes and consequences of water disasters and efforts to address them successfully through policy-rich, cross-disciplinary and transnational papers. This book is designed to help enrich the sparse discourse on water disaster management policies and galvanize water professionals to craft creative solutions to tackle water disasters efficiently, equitably, and sustainably. This book should also be of considerable use to disaster management professionals, in general, and natural resource policy analysts. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Natural Resource Policy Research.

The authors assess alternative approaches to meeting long-term water needs and resolving conflicts among competing water users in five areas: the Columbia River Basin; Kern County, California; south California; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and northeastern Colorado. This book argues that America's water supply problems are caused largely by bad habits and poor policies-especially policies that price water far under its true value. Originally published in 1986

One of the early set of reforms that South Africa embarked on after emerging from apartheid was in the water sector, following a remarkable, consultative process. The policy and legal reforms were comprehensive and covered almost all aspects of water management including revolutionary changes in defining and allocating rights to water, radical reforms in water management and supply institutions, the introduction of the protection of environmental flows, and major shifts in charging for water use and in the provision of free basic water. Over ten years of implementation of these policy and legislative changes mean that valu­able lessons have already been learned and useful experiences gained in the challenge of effective water resources management and water services provision in a middle income country.

This original analysis of the Middle East water problems highlights questions and issues which have so far only received minimal attention. The author develops a multi-layered account of the nature and causes of the conflict and the Pealestinian water crisis. Each chapter addresses a particular aspect of the Israeli-Palestine water conflict and the author uses these to illustrate both the broader nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations and factors that the existing water literature underplays or simply gets wrong. The book should interest students, scholars and practitioners in a wide range of disciplines including Middle East studies, politics and international relations, water policy, geography, environmental studies and environmental management.