Integrated Water Resources Management

Over the years, I've heard what people consider to be the challenges we face in trying to manage our water resources and plan for the future. I decided to take it upon myself and discover what people are publishing in regards to the types of challenges we face. I searched about 30 documents (articles and other publications) and found that most the challenges can be organized into 6 categories. The challenges include:  Water quality   Competing Uses   Increasing demands   Climate change   Land use change   Institutional challenges*   I counted which categories people focused on and summarized it in a pie chart. Most publications listed more than one type of challenge. *managing risk, coordination, corruption, conflicting policies, inadequate funds Within these different types of challenges people focus on, I found some interesting aspects regarding the types of authors that report these challenges. ...

The Kirshen approach to IWRM I recently read an interesting article titled, "Challenges in Graduate Education in Integrated Water Resources Management" (Kirshen, 2004) that expressed the need for implementation of integrated water resources management. In this article, four pillars of IWRM were presented. The pillars are summarized as: These pillars are described in detail below. Systems Analysis includes system evaluation, optimization approaches, statistical analysis, simulation modeling, decision analysis, risk assessment, multi-criteria analysis, and the development of indicators and metrics for analyzing problems. The Science and Technology of Water involves hydrology, fate and transport of environmental contaminants, water chemistry, water quality, water conservation, and water resources engineering. Biological Aspects of Water, Health and Nutrition covers ecology, environmental impacts, food and nutrition, epidemiology of...