ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492045

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

This paper takes as its starting point today's paradoxical situation where a global water crisis is threatening a world in which water illiteracy is widespread among those expected to cope with that crisis. This creates a huge communication challenge for hydrologists, having to brief decision makers, diplomats and politicians in a manner that is simplistic without being water-reductionistic. The paper proposes some simple explanatory models, to be used for explaining and visualizing fundamental man/water interactions. It also discusses environmental sustainability criteria and their consequences in terms of the capacity to support water dependent populations. Large stress is put on land/water interactions. The paper ends with a conceptual framework based on the water cycle, distinguishing between rural and urban water use, water structures for mobilizing water for such uses, side effects, and key points for societal control mechanisms.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492046

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

The significance of water availability for sustainable development is discussed. A review of water-related areas of concern in Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainability, is offered, with particular reference to its Chapter 18 devoted to freshwater resources. The problems of water resources of vulnerable areas are tackled for the examples of arid and semiarid lands, mountains and small islands. The importance of water resources assessment and its building block, hydrological observations, for sustainable development is demonstrated and the adverse tendencies of declining hydrological observation networks are reported. Hydrological network density is seen as one of the indicators of sustainable development. Hydrological and water resources systems are perceived only as a component of the complex global system. Therefore a holistic perspective is advocated, looking at the existing interrelationships and interfaces with other sub-systems, including social, economic, institutional, etc.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492047

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

This paper presents the development of a framework for data collection network design that considers sustainable development goals. The proposed framework adopts sustainable development principles and incorporates and revises traditional methodologies used in data collection network design. Important components of the framework include a focus on hydrological information, the preservation of long term gauging stations, and the adoption of integrated ecosystem monitoring. The eventual adoption of the framework should ensure that hydrological information required for effective decision making in water resources is available even as hydrometric data collection networks are rationalized.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492048

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

Sustainable development is the new water resources paradigm of the 1990s, Yet its practical implications seem to be elusive. Metrics for measuring the level of sustainability are eagerly sought. It is very difficult to capture the important features, and maintain many of the valued details, of environmental and social systems when complete or appropriate economic accounting is attempted. A much more transcendent and flexible metric may beconsensus.Consensus as a sustainability metric describes the level in which stakeholders are satisfied with a solution to a question. Consensus assumes that an appropriate group of stakeholders is able to collaborate in assessing proposed solutions to environmental problems or development initiatives. It also assumes that the collective best which a group of stakeholders has to offer implicitly provides insight to the needs of future generations. This paper describes an approach for assessing a level of consensus. The benefits are: estimation of areas of common understanding; and clarification of conflicting values.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492049

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

Neoclassical economics has only recently considered the problem of sustainability—how to provide for the well-being of future generations given ecological constraints. In general, the neoclassical economist perceives physical and ecological constraints on economy-environment interactions as inconveniences that will inevitably be overcome by substitution—the discovery of new economic resources or technologies allowing the conversion of noneconomic materials to economic goods. Ecologists and ecological economists, however, argue that the constraints will bind. The debate centres on the relevance of entropy to the economics of resource use: irrelevant in the neoclassical view, relevant in the ecological. This paper places entropy, within the context of neoclassical economic thought, as a limit to economic growth. The paper rigorously argues the existence of limits to knowledge and consequently to technology and substitution, undermining a basic assumption of neoclassical economics and establishing the relevance of entropy to economic theories of resource use.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492050

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

This paper focuses on the measurement of the relative sustainability of renewable water resource systems. Being able to quantify sustainability makes it possible to compare alternative plans and policies, and to include sustainability as one of the multiple objectives to be considered when making decisions regarding the design and operation of these systems. Commonly used measures of reliability, resilience and vulnerability, based on subjective judgements concerning what is acceptable or unacceptable with respect to multiple system performance indicators, are combined into an index and used as a measure of changes in relative system sustainability over time.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492051

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

This work develops general fairness measures that may be used as criteria for sustainable project selection. Sustainable development, fair allocation objectives and empirical distance-based measures of fairness, and their evaluation are discussed. Generalized fairness measures are developed and extended for both intratemporal and intertemporal fairness comparisons. A preliminary application of the extended distance based fairness measures is then performed for a case study of the selection of an electricity supply project. The case study involves selecting between a dispersed diesel energy supply and centralized energy supply with land line energy distribution. Due to data limitations, the perceived fairness is measured in terms of the annual energy costs per megawatt-hour that result from implementing each alternative. The applied fairness measures indicate that intratemporal fairness, in terms of the distribution of user unit costs, may be increased by choosing the land line alternative and that there is no significant difference among alternatives with respect to intertemporal fairness. These results provide limited insight into the energy supply problem, however, and it is suggested that further analyses should be conducted when information regarding the environmental impacts and reliability of power supply for each of the alternatives becomes available.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492052

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

The need for efficient pipe networks for urban water supply and drainage is introduced and discussed in the context of global sustainable development. The role of computer based analysis and design tools in the planning and operation of such systems is described, with the way in which these tools can help to minimize use of resources, energy and water losses being explained. In particular, numerical techniques such as Genetic Algorithms, which are based on the principles of natural evolution, are found to be particularly effective in dealing with the large, complex systems that typify urban water distribution networks. These evolutionary techniques are introduced and discussed, and several applications of the techniques to the development of efficient water systems are described. A case study on the use of these techniques in the calibration of an accurate mathematical model of an urban water distribution system is included.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492053

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor

摘要:

Sustainable groundwater resources development implies use of groundwater as a source of water supply, on a long term basis, in an efficient and equitable manner sustaining its quality and environmental diversity. An understanding of the behaviour of a groundwater system and of its interaction with the environment is required to formulate a sustainable management plan. Mathematical models supported by field information play a key role in assessing the future behaviour of a system to stresses and to find effective operating conditions for sustainable development and management of groundwater resources. Basic principles for sustainable development are stressed and a brief review of two case studies is provided to illustrate how a systems approach and its computational framework of mathematical models can be used in addressing the main issue of water allocation satisfying some of the technical and environmental constraints.

ISSN:0262-6667    

DOI:10.1080/02626669709492054

出版商:Taylor & Francis Group    

年代:1997

数据来源: Taylor