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| Titel |
Reimagining the past – use of counterfactual trajectories in socio-hydrological modelling: the case of Chennai, India |
| VerfasserIn |
V. Srinivasan |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1027-5606
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ; 19, no. 2 ; Nr. 19, no. 2 (2015-02-05), S.785-801 |
| Datensatznummer |
250120622
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/hess-19-785-2015.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
The developing world is rapidly urbanizing. One of the challenges associated with this growth will
be to supply water to growing cities of the developing world. Traditional planning tools fare poorly
over 30–50 year time horizons because these systems are changing so rapidly. Models that hold land
use, economic patterns, governance systems or technology static over a long planning horizon could
result in inaccurate predictions leading to sub-optimal or paradoxical outcomes. Most models fail
to account for adaptive responses by humans that in turn influence water resource availability,
resulting in coevolution of the human–water system. Is a particular trajectory inevitable given
a city's natural resource endowment, is the trajectory purely driven by policy or are there
tipping points in the evolution of a city's growth that shift it from one trajectory onto another?
Socio-hydrology has been defined as a new science of water and people that will explicitly account
for such bi-directional feedbacks. However, a particular challenge in incorporating such feedbacks is
imagining technological, social and political futures that could fundamentally alter future water demand,
allocation and use. This paper offers an alternative approach – the use of counterfactual
trajectories – that allows policy insights to be gleaned without having to predict social
futures. The approach allows us to "reimagine the past"; to observe how outcomes would differ
if different decisions had been made.
The paper presents a "socio-hydrological" model that simulates the feedbacks between the human,
engineered and hydrological systems in Chennai, India over a 40-year period. The model offers several
interesting insights. First, the study demonstrates that urban household water security goes
beyond piped water supply. When piped supply fails, users turn to their own wells. If the wells
dry up, consumers purchase expensive tanker water or curtail water use and thus become water
insecure. Second, unsurprisingly, different initial conditions result in different trajectories.
But initial advantages in piped infrastructure are eroded if the utility is unable to expand
the piped system to keep up with growth. Both infrastructure and sound management decisions
are necessary to ensure household water security although the impacts of mismanagement may
not manifest until much later when the population has grown and a multi-year drought strikes.
Third, natural resource endowments can limit the benefits of good policy and infrastructure.
Cities can boost recharge through artificial recharge schemes. However, cities underlain by
productive aquifers can better rely on groundwater as a buffer against drought, compared to
cities with unproductive aquifers. |
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