Sustainable Water : Resources, Management and Challenges

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.