This committee report, Sustainability Criteria for Water Resource Systems, addresses the need and challenge to reexamine our approaches to water resources planning and management. Water resource systems need to be able to satisfy the changing demands placed on them, now and on into the future, without system degradation. In order to create these sustainable systems, a more holistic and integrated life-cycle approach to water resources planning, development, and management must take place. Such an approach should lead to plans, facilities, and policies that will be physically, economically, environmentally, ecologically, and socially acceptable and beneficial by current as well as future generations. This document examines many of the major issues and challenges raised by the concept of sustainability applied to water resource system design and management. Various suggested guidelines are reviewed including the extent to which they have been applied in the development and management of water resource systems. Some approaches for measuring and modeling sustainability are outlined, and ways are illustrated in which these measures and models might be used when evaluating designs and operating policies. While this manual focuses on the contributions scientists, engineers, economists, and planners can make, it recognizes that the public stakeholders and their political representatives and institutions must also contribute to efficient and sustainable water management.

An international group of experts review guidelines for achieving sustainability in water resource systems.

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.

Providing clean water to earth's rapidly growing human population is one the major issues of the 21st Century. The climatic effects of global warming on water supply has made this a hot-button issue.

This committee report, Sustainability Criteria for Water Resource Systems, addresses the need and challenge to reexamine our approaches to water resources planning and management. Water resource systems need to be able to satisfy the changing demands placed on them, now and on into the future, without system degradation. In order to create these sustainable systems, a more holistic and integrated life-cycle approach to water resources planning, development, and management must take place. Such an approach should lead to plans, facilities, and policies that will be physically, economically, environmentally, ecologically, and socially acceptable and beneficial by current as well as future generations. This document examines many of the major issues and challenges raised by the concept of sustainability applied to water resource system design and management. Various suggested guidelines are reviewed including the extent to which they have been applied in the development and management of water resource systems. ways are illustrated in which these measures and models might be used when evaluating designs and operating policies. While this manual focuses on the contributions scientists, engineers, economists, and planners can make, it recognizes that the public stakeholders and their political representatives and institutions must also contribute to efficient and sustainable water management.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This revised, updated textbook presents a systems approach to the planning, management, and operation of water resources infrastructure in the environment. Previously published in 2005 by UNESCO and Deltares (Delft Hydraulics at the time), this new edition, written again with contributions from Jery R. Stedinger, Jozef P. M. Dijkman, and Monique T. Villars, is aimed equally at students and professionals. It introduces readers to the concept of viewing issues involving water resources as a system of multiple interacting components and scales. It offers guidelines for initiating and carrying out water resource system planning and management projects. It introduces alternative optimization, simulation, and statistical methods useful for project identification, design, siting, operation and evaluation and for studying post-planning issues. The authors cover both basin-wide and urban water issues and present ways of identifying and evaluating alternatives for addressing multiple-purpose and multi-objective water quantity and quality management challenges. Reinforced with cases studies, exercises, and media supplements throughout, the text is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in water resource planning and management as well as for practicing planners and engineers in the field.

This open access textbook provides a concise introduction to economic approaches and mathematical methods for the study of water allocation and distribution problems. Written in an accessible and straightforward style, it discusses and analyzes central issues in integrated water resource management, water tariffs, water markets, and transboundary water management. By illustrating the interplay between the hydrological cycle and the rules and institutions that govern today’s water allocation policies, the authors develop a modern perspective on water management. Moreover, the book presents an in-depth assessment of the political and ethical dimensions of water management and its institutional embeddedness, by discussing distribution issues and issues of the enforceability of human rights in managing water resources. Given its scope, the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and engineering, as well as practitioners in the water sector, seeking a deeper understanding of economic approaches to the study of water management.

Small communities violate federal requirements for safe drinking water as much as three times more often than cities. Yet these communities often cannot afford to improve their water service. Safe Water From Every Tap reviews the risks of violating drinking water standards and discusses options for improving water service in small communities. Included are detailed reviews of a wide range of technologies appropriate for treating drinking water in small communities. The book also presents a variety of institutional options for improving the management efficiency and financial stability of water systems.

"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"--