Assessment of future water availability under climate change, considering scenarios for population growth and ageing infrastructure

Abstract

Climate change is likely to cause higher temperatures and alterations in precipitation patterns, with potential impacts on water resources. One important issue in this respect is inflow to drinking water reservoirs. Moreover, deteriorating infrastructures cause leakage in water distribution systems and urbanization augments water demand in cities. In this paper, a framework for assessing the combined impacts of multiple trends on water availability is proposed. The approach is focused on treating uncertainty in local climate projections in order to be of practical use to water suppliers and decision makers. An index for water availability (WAI) is introduced to quantify impacts of climate change, population growth, and ageing infrastructure, as well as the effects of implementing counteractive measures, and has been applied to the city of Bergen, Norway. Results of the study emphasize the importance of considering a range of climate scenarios due to the wide spread in global projections. For the specific case of Bergen, substantial alterations in the hydrological cycle were projected, leading to stronger seasonal variations and a more unpredictable water availability.By sensitivity analysis of the WAI, it was demonstrated how two adaptive measures, increased storage capacity and leakage reduction, can help counteract the impacts of climate change.

Climate change, coastal tourism, and impact chains – a literature review

“…As regards physical impacts, it is expected that CC will cause wet tropical regions to get wetter and subtropical dry regions to become drier, reducing soil moisture and runoff (Seager et al, 2013), while for northern regions the water stress is projected to reduce (Koutroulis et al, 2019). Water availability is one of the most intrinsically complex factors, as it is determined by a huge number of variables apart from most obvious temperatures and precipitation: plants vegetation response (Mankin et al, 2019), population growth, ageing and water supply infrastructure (Kristvik et al, 2019).…”

Preliminary long-term predictive modelling of groundwater resources in view of climate change – a case study from eastern Poland

“…The in trin sic un cer tainty that ac com pa nies the cli mate scenar ios and pro jec tions makes it com pli cated to use them as a ba sis for de ci sion-mak ing (Kristvik et al, 2019). There fore, the re sults of pre lim i nary long-term pre dic tive mod el ling, ob tained by the au thors, should be treated only as ap prox i mate and uncer tain.…”

StreamflowVL: A Virtual Fieldwork Laboratory that Supports Traditional Hydraulics Engineering Learning

“…Water is a vital resource for the survival of the planet and, as such, it must be protected. In recent years, climate change has caused significant variations in precipitation and temperature patterns, affecting the availability of water and the effectiveness of water treatment infrastructures [48][49][50]. In particular, water quality problems may increase where there is less flow to dilute contaminants introduced by natural and human sources [51].…”