Biophysical Considerations for Water Resilience

Module developed by Professor Larry Baker, Professor, University of Minnesota; Hillary Waters, PhD Candidate, University of Minnesota

Welcome to the module Biophysical Considerations for Water Resilience! Other modules in the International WaTERS training program deal mainly with the social dimensions of water – equity, gender, conflicts, and political ecology. This module examines the biophysical aspects of water for viewers that have little or no background in hydrology, environmental chemistry, or engineering. The key premise is that achieving water resilience requires a balance of technocratic and social concerns. The submodules review how water moves through watersheds, how water is used, what “water resilience” means from a socio-ecological standpoint, the problems of chemical and microbial contamination, and how water and sewage are treated.

This module is composed of 4 submodules:
☑ Submodule 1: Primer on Hydrology, Water Consumption, and Hydrologic Resilience (1.5 hours)
☑ Submodule 2: Water Contaminants (2 hours)
☑ Submodule 3: The Global Situation For Water And Sanitation (2 hours)
☑ Submodule 4: Approaches for Treating Water and Sewage (2 hours)

Submodule 1: Primer on Hydrology, Water Consumption, and Hydrologic Resilience

Learning Objectives

  • Recognize basic concepts of hydrology and water consumption as they relate to urban droughts and water resilience.

Key Concepts

Basic water cycle, water consumption, water resilience.

1. A basic primer on watershed hydrology and water balances

There are many key concepts regarding biophysical aspects of water and water management.  These include how to understand aquifers, connections between aquifers and streams, evaporative loss, consumptive and non-consumptive losses, and effluent-dominated streams – all necessary for water management.  We then examine drivers of water scarcity in the Global South – a problem that may grow worse if you don’t improve water management.  These drivers include not only climate change, but also rapidly growing urban and especially unorganized peri-urban populations in drier parts of the world, and increasing wealth in the Global South, with concomitant increase in water demand, illustrated by a hydrological twist of Maslow’s Triangle.  The idea of water resilience is introduced, illustrated conceptually for the case of a hypothetical drought, in cities with various levels of water resilience and robustness follow disparate pathways of recovery.

Finally, the last slides focus on how our increasing ability to acquire, transmit, process and store hydrologic information may transform water management. Is it possible that these technologies could enable the Global South to leapfrog over Western approaches to water management, developed in the low-information 20th century, much like the communications leapfrogging that occurred in the past 20 years with widespread market penetration of cell phones in areas that never had land lines?  Could these new technologies help to create water resilience even in drier, poorer areas, even in the face of climate change?

2. Primer on Hydrology, Water Consumption, and Hydrologic Resilience

Key Readings

Healey, R. W., T. C. Winter, J. W. LaBaugh, and O. L. Franke. 2007. Water Budgets: Foundations for Effective Water-Resources and Environmental Management. U.S. Geological Survey.

Read: Introduction to Exchange of Water Between Compartments of the Hydrological Cycle

UNEP (2008), V. 2008. Vital Water Graphics. 2nd Edition. UNEP, Nairobi, Kenya.

Read: Freshwater Resources (section)

Discussion Questions

These are open-ended questions, for either group discussion or your own meditations on the mountain top, with the goal of developing your ideas on water resilience.

  • On the drought resilience graph, the X axis is not labeled. What metrics do you think would be helpful to quantify “resilience”?  What types of changes occur during a drought, and what does “water resilience” mean?
  • Regarding the Maslov Triangle for water use (slide 12), are there other water uses that should be included?  What types of industries in your city use a lot of water?  How might you use this concept to prioritize water allocation during a drought?  You might want to answer this question after studying the Water Equity and Peri-Urban modules.
  • Slide 20 illustrates the use of modern digital technology for hydrologic management.  Given that most of the world has now acquired cell phones, and many now have smartphones, what apps could you envision to manage water in your locale?

Quiz

Further Readings

Baker, L. 2016 (in press, note posted). Drought resilience as a socio-ecological phenomenon. in A. Rademacher, editor. Situating sustainability in an uncertain world. NYU Press, New York.

Other related International Waters Lessons and Submodules

 

 

Submodule 2: Water Contaminants

Learning Objectives

  • Recognize types of water contaminants, their sources, and their global distribution.
  • Identify multiple routes of transmission, involving food, water, and physical contact.         
  • Comprehend natural and human generated chemical pollution.
  • Assess waterborne disease and pollution as aspects of water resilience.

Key concepts

Waterborne disease, disease transmission, sources of chemical contaminants.

1. The impacts of disease and contamination

Contamination of food and water by fecal contamination is one of the world’s leading development problems, causing death of about 800,000 children/year (about 2 million of all ages).  Fecal contamination causes a variety of diarrheal diseases, including typhoid and cholera, among many others.  Fecal bacteria are spread by multiple, interconnected routes – hand to food, sewage to water, and others (see slide 4).  Water can also be contaminated by chemicals, including nitrate, salts, and mine drainage.  This submodule examines various major types of water contaminants.

2. Water contaminants 

Key Readings

Discussion questions  

  • During a drought, why might waterborne diseases increase?
  • Referring to slide #4 (transmission pathways), which transmission routes could be most easily blocked in your city?  Which transmission routes would face the greatest barriers?

Quiz

Further Readings

Lie et al., 2012. Global, regional, and national causes of child mortality: an updated systematic analysis for 2010 with time trends since 2000. Lancet  379: 2151–61.

Gleick, P. The human right to water. Water Policy Volume 1, Issue 5, October 1998, Pages 487-503

Other related International Waters Lessons and Submodules

Submodule 3: The Global Situation For Water And Sanitation

Learning Objectives

  • Develop an understanding of water sanitation, bacterial contamination, UN classifications of water provision, the global extent of mortality from diarrheal disease, and terminology used in water sanitation.

Key Concepts

Improved and unimproved water supply, water sanitation, global situation for water and sanitation.

1. Differences between the Global North and South

In the industrialized west, we generally take clean water and sanitation (in this context, sewage disposal) for granted.  This certainly isn’t true for much of the Global South, where substantial parts of the population lack access to clean water, and very large fractions of populations lack even basic sanitation.  This submodule quickly reviews the global situation for water and sanitation.  For context, the previous submodule (2) reviews waterborne diseases and the next submodule (4) presents an overview of water treatment and sewage disposal.

2. The Global Situation For Water And Sanitation

Key Readings

Read: Section B: Highlighting Inequalities & Section C: A Framework for Monitoring Wash Post-2015

Discussion Questions

  • What is the difference between “improved” water supply and “safe” water supply?
  • During drought conditions, how does the situation for water supply and sanitation affect resilience?

Quiz

Further Readings

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th edition. World Economic Forum, Download from: https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2016

Other related International Waters Lessons and Submodules

Submodule 4: Approaches for Treating Water and Sewage

Learning Objectives

  • Comprehend water and wastewater treatment concepts and processes at scales from households to cities, including disinfection by filtration and chlorination, dry sanitation methods, sewage treatment, and the economics of wastewater treatment.

Key Concepts

1.  Sanitation and clean water

In western industrialized countries, water is nearly always treated and distributed at the community level to individual households, and human excretion is conveyed by municipal sewers to wastewater treatment plants, with varying levels of treatment before discharge.  We take this for granted, often ignorant of the fact that water sanitation was once deemed the greatest medical advances of civilization by the British Medical Journal.

However, much of the Global South lacks these amenities.  This submodule examines basic processes by which water is sanitized for drinking and human excreta is handled to prevent disease transmission.

2. Approaches for Treating Water and Sewage

Key Readings

CDC/CCHI Handbook Safe Water Systems for the Developing World. 

Read: 2.0- Decide to do a project and set project objectives; 10.0-Prepare to implement the behavior change strategy through 12.0-Implement the project

World Bank Group, Cost of Water Treatment.

Focus on: “Rethinking our Approach to Choosing Sanitation Interventions” by Guy Hutton, at the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program   http://www.wsp.org/content/economic-impacts-sanitation

Discussion questions

  • What are some potential positive and negative social effects of moving from community water taps to household-level delivery of piped water?
  • Thinking again of your city, how much wastewater (including household greywater) is reused?  If wastewater is recycled, is it at the municipal level (piped sewage followed by treatment before reuse) or at the household level (like using wash water for garden irrigation). What are the cultural traditions or laws that guide this practice?

Quiz

 

Further Readings

Other related International Waters Lessons and Submodules

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