Water Resource Management Issues

Water resources play an essential role in all aspects of human life and activities. All living organisms need water for survival. Due to increased demand for water, appropriate water resources management should be established. This book covers various aspects of water resources management, including their use for different purposes and impacts of natural factors and anthropogenic pressures on water resources. Climate changes affect water resources, causing floods and droughts. All human activities such as water supply, irrigation, navigation, hydropower, tourism and recreation use water resources. The natural and anthropogenic impacts cause a decline in water quantity and the degradation of water quality. Water resources are especially important in protected areas and management of them in these areas is a specific challenge. Adequate water resources management should address all water related issues, to establish an institutional and legal framework, as well as the cooperation of all relevant actors in this field at national and international level. Water reuse, such as wastewater management is also an important challenge. This book provides some models and methods which are used for water resources estimation, their vulnerability and exposure to natural and anthropogenic influences. Taking into account various aspects of water related topics, application of diverse models and methods in different geographical areas, the book Water Resources Management: Methods, Applications and Challenges could help policy and decision makers as well as other stakeholders in finding the solutions of some water related problems.

Drinking Water Safety: Basic Principles and Applications, examines the technical and scientific, as well as regulatory, ethical, and emerging issues of pollution prevention, sustainability, and optimization for the production and management of safe drinking water to cope with environmental pollution, population growth, increasing demand, terrorist threats, and climate change pressures. It presents a summary of conventional water and wastewater treatment technologies, in addition to the latest processes. Features include:  Provides a summary of current and future of global water resources and availability.  Summarizes key U.S. regulatory programs designed to ensure protection of water quality and safe drinking water supplies, with details on modern approaches for water utility resilience.  Examines the latest water treatment technologies and processes, including separate chapters on evaporation, crystallization, nanotechnology, membrane-based processes, and innovative desalination approaches.  Reviews the specialized literature on pollution prevention, sustainability, and the role of optimization in water treatment and related areas, as well as references for further reading.  Provides illustrative examples and case studies that complement the text throughout, as well as an appendix with sections on units and conversion constants.

Sustainable Water Resources Management presents the most current thinking on the environmental, social, and political dimensions of sustainably managing the water supply at local, regional, or basin levels.

Population growth, increasing living standards, and rapidly changing climate have resulted in an increasing demand for freshwater, accelerating the water degradation challenges. There is a compelling need to minimize water consumption and develop approaches to effectively manage existing water resources. On a positive note, water resource management strategies discussed in this book present innovative ways to conserve both quality and quantity. Chapter 1 discusses decentralized water management approaches for intervening the urban water cycle to minimize the environmental and socioeconomic impacts. This chapter concludes with a need to use a suite of tools based on decision support systems for managing urban water resources. Chapter 2 discusses the need for assessing suitability of various types of models for a specific scenario based on the required level of complexity. This chapter discusses in detail the underlying criteria behind model selection, validation, and uncertainty analysis. Urban watersheds can be more challenging compared to natural watersheds. The urban watersheds include parking lots, roads, and developed structures, all of which contribute to a myriad of anthropogenic pollutants through stormwater runoff. Computer-based models can be used to study water quality issues and to develop a plan to manage watershed level resources. Chapter 3 compares pros and cons of the state-of-the-art watershed models used for managing water resources. Numerical simulations can be performed to compare the current and future water quality scenarios of a given watershed and to estimate the impact of potential water resource management strategies. Chapter 4 presents a case study of an urban region in Hanoi, Vietnam. Water evaluation and planning simulation tool was used to predict the trends and drivers of wastewater generation. Considering rapidly changing climate and associated weather impacts, it is critical to secure water resources in addition to dealing with the water quality issues. Chapter 5 suggests that climate change models and watershed and precipitation models should be jointly used in order to capture uncertainties in ecological functions, energy and food production and water supply sources. Chapter 6 presents a water use estimation and management tool that examines the effect of climate change and drought conditions on water supplies to ensure adequate buffalo forage. Sustaining both buffalo forage and water supplies during drought conditions requires preparedness and adaptation in response to unfavorable conditions. Finally, water reuse can alleviate the stress on available water resources. For example, effluents from wastewater treatment plants and desalination plants can be treated and reused for managing water crisis. Chapter 7 emphasizes that it is critical to optimize both economical and sustainability parameters during treatment of wastewater effluents and desalination concentrate. In certain cases, valuable metals can be recovered from the concentrate.

Better water management will be crucial if we are to meet many of the key challenges of this century - feeding the worlds growing population and reducing poverty, meeting water and sanitation needs, protecting vital ecosystems, all while adapting to climate change. The approach known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is widely recognized as the best way forward, but is poorly understood, even within the water sector. Since a core IWRM principle is that good water management must involve the water users, the understanding and involvement of other sectors is critical for success. There is thus an urgent need for practical guidance, for both water and development professionals, based on real world examples, rather than theoretical constructs. That is what this book provides. Using case studies, the book illustrates how better water management, guided by the IWRM approach, has helped to meet a wide range of sustainable development goals. It does this by considering practical examples, looking at how IWRM has contributed, at different scales, from very local, village-level experiences to reforms at national level and beyond to cases involving trans-boundary river basins. Using these on-the-ground experiences, from both developed and developing countries in five continents, the book provides candid and practical lessons for policy-makers, donors, and water and development practitioners worldwide, looking at how IWRM principles were applied, what worked, and, equally important, what didn‘t work, and why. Published with the Global Water Partnership

Water is an increasingly critical issue at the forefront of global policy change, management and planning. There are growing concerns about water as a renewable resource, its availability for a wide range of users, aquatic ecosystem health, and global issues relating to climate change, water security, water trading and water ethics. This handbook provides the most comprehensive reference ever published on water resource issues. It brings together multiple disciplines to understand and help resolve problems of water quality and scarcity from a global perspective. Its case studies and 'foundation' chapters will be greatly valued by students, researchers and professionals involved in water resources, hydrology, governance and public policy, law, economics, geography and environmental studies.

Water resource management throughout the world is a very complicated issue, involving various aspects and dimensions and a well-coordinated set of policies. A well-designed water policy is a multi-faceted concerted intervention, which could be specific to just one set of political and physical socio-economic conditions. A framework to analyse the interaction between policy design and implementation can assist in improving both of these in various physical, economic and political situations. This book focuses on the interaction between policy making and strategic behaviour of policy makers, water users and other stakeholders, and how policy analysis and other analytical tools from the field of game theory and negotiation can improve policy design. The book presents analysis by high-level policy makers and policy analysts from various countries, to share experience regarding specific policy issues that are relevant to almost any country in the world, but may have been addressed differently in each country.

With reference to India; contributed articles presented at a seminar.