Regional Water Security
Regional water security around the world is at risk from both climatic and non-climatic challenges impacting water quantity and water quality. For instance, climate change is projected to decrease the availability of renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly, intensifying competition for water resources among users, as well as to reduce the availability of good quality drinking water, even with conventional treatment processes.
Rapid population growth and urbanization will lead to increased water scarcity and ecosystem degradation due to excess water withdrawal, eutrophication, land-use changes, and pollution, while peri-urban water competition is likely to increase with further urbanisation. With economic growth, global demand for water will significantly increase due to manufacturing, industry, and domestic consumption.
At the same time, household water demand is projected to increase due to higher incomes and living standards, as well as a shift in diet to water-intensive meat and dairy products.
In many locations, a large portion of the water infrastructure is approaching or has already reached the end of its useful life, with aging infrastructure often resulting in high water loss from physical leakage. In addition, sewage and contaminated groundwater can enter leaking pipes and travel throughout the water distribution network, causing public health concerns, such as outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness.
Between now and 2040, it is projected that the amount of energy used in the water sector will double, with the most substantial increase coming from desalination, followed by large-scale water transfer and increasing demand for (higher levels of) wastewater treatment.
Finally, by 2050, the world will require at the minimum 60 percent more food production to maintain current consumption patterns, leading to a significant increase in the volume of global water withdrawn for irrigation. Agriculture is one of the most significant contributors to non-point source pollution impacting rivers, streams, and lakes, harming public health, creating dead zones in water, increasing water treatment costs, and impacting industries dependent on clean water.
Demand management
Traditionally, water managers have relied on large-scale, supply-side infrastructural projects such as dams and reservoirs to meet increased demands for water (supply-side management). However, these projects are costly, both economically and environmentally. Also, with most water resources being transboundary, supply-side projects can create political tensions. Therefore, there is a need to move toward managing actual demand for water (demand management), as ultimately it is society’s attitudes and behaviors toward water that determine the amount of that needs to be supplied. Demand management involves making better use of existing water supplies before attempting to increase them further. Specifically, it promotes water conservation under both normal and abnormal conditions, through changes in practice, culture, and people’s attitudes toward water resources. It seeks to reduce the loss and misuse of water, optimize its use, and facilitate major financial and infrastructural savings by minimizing the need to meet increasing demand with new water supplies. Demand management also involves the development of alternative water supplies as a means of diversification in order to meet various potable and non-potable water needs.
Demand management: The City of Houston’s Water Usage Alerts
The City of Houston’s water utility customers can sign up for usage alerts. High bills, resulting from increased registered water usage, are the responsibility of the customer, irrespective of whether they have access to these alerts. Customers who sign up for high usage alerts receive a notification if their water usage is higher than usual. If there is a broken pipe or leaking toilet, a high usage alert could be the first indicator of a potentially large water bill. Customers that sign up to the service can:
- Receive usage alerts and notifications via email.
- Access usage information via computer or phone.
- View their water usage by monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly patterns.
- Track their use history.
- Customers will also receive alerts according to their set threshold via email, informing them of their current gallon consumption, dates when this consumption was used, and constant flow detection (which helps to identify leaks and other high bill causes)
Green infrastructure
The most common means of mitigating risks from climatic extremes has been increasing investment in conventional — or “gray” — infrastructures such as dams and levees. However, engineers and decision-makers have come to realize the economic and environmental costs of these solutions, including high capital costs, amplified downstream flooding risks, and ecosystem degradation. As such, there has been a turn to more long-term economically and environmentally sustainable “green” infrastructure solutions that provide equivalent or similar benefits to gray infrastructure. For instance, green infrastructure utilizes natural and semi- natural systems to manage excess water while enhancing ecosystems. It can also be used to mitigate the impacts of droughts, ensuring there is sufficient water for both humans and nature. Furthermore, green infrastructure can purify water using natural filtration processes. A unique feature of green infrastructure is that it can appreciate over time.
Green infrastructure: Dynamic LIFE Lines Danube Project 2019–2023
The Dynamic LIFE Lines Danube project is an Austrian-Slovak initiative for the restoration of floodplains along the Danube river. In both countries, a total of 25 kilometers of side arms will be increasingly connected to the Danube and thus made more dynamic. These waters are the lifelines of the floodplain forests. The main objectives of the project are:
- Ecological upgrade of over 1600 hectares of riparian forests.
- Reconnection of around 14 kilometers of river branches.
- Dynamization of 11 kilometers of river branches.
- Renaturation of almost 4 kilometers of riverbank.
Some of the expected results of the project include:
- Substantial Improvements to Ecosystem Functions and Services: The productivity of riverine and alluvial ecosystems, including fish and increased carbon sequestration, water retention capacity and flood protection, and river ecosystem capacity for natural degradation of organic pollution, will be restored or enhanced.
- Reconnection of Haslau-Regelsbrunn (Austria) River Branch: This will result in the dynamization of about 10 kilometers of river branch system, improving floodplain forests and muddy bank habitats on around 450 hectares of floodplain.
- Restoration of Floodplain Forests: Over 1000 hectares of floodplain forests will be restored in the Danube floodplain area in Slovakia.
Communities
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