A paradigm shift in urban water management: An imperative to achieve sustainability

Abstract

With increasing global change pressures (such as urbanization and climate change) and existing unsustainable factors and risks inherent to conventional urban water management, cities in the future will experience difficulties in efficiently managing scarcer and less reliable water resources. In order to meet these challenges, there needs to be a paradigm shift to integrated urban water management (IUWM). This paradigm shift is based on several key concepts including resilience of urban water systems to global change pressures, interventions over the entire urban water cycle, reconsideration of the way water is used (and reused), and greater application of natural systems for treatment. This chapter will present an integrated framework supporting IUWM and its key principles.