Speaker
Description
Water scarcity has become one of the chronic environmental issues that threaten human lives in various areas in the world. Various frameworks and approaches have been developed to determine the water scarcity, and most of the results propose to reduce the scarcity by lowering water consumption and increase reuse. However, in addition to the water scarcity caused by over-exploitation of water resources, growing cases have indicated that the shortage of available water resources has become the major cause of water scarcity. This type of water scarcity increasingly occurs in countries with non-increasing (and even decreasing) water consumptions. These countries are often developed countries with the economy operating in tertiary sectors or advanced secondary sectors, and the population in these countries tends to maintain or increase with a very low rate. In these cases, the potential of compressing the industrial and residential consumption has become limited, and the overall water consumption usually main at a stable level or even decrease. On the other hand, with the decrease in water consumption, water suppliers might increase the water price to maintain a reasonable benefit. The burden of water scarcity is shifted to the user, who contributed to water-saving and water-use efficiency improvement. Mitigating this type of water scarcity faces new challenges and conflicts. This work provides an analytical review of the current issues and future potentials to alleviate the water scarcity in countries with non-increasing water consumptions and provides suggestions for water management policies. Significant remarks are that multi-user (industries, residences, wastewater treatment plants, etc.) water integration is still of great potential to maximise the water usability. Rainwater harvesting and storage are promising to increase water availability. Water infrastructures needed for regional water integration and rainwater utilisation should be further designed and developed.
Keywords: Water Scarcity, Water Integration, Rain Water Harvesting, Water Infrastructure
Acknowledgement
The EU supported project Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL funded as project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456, by Czech Republic Operational Programme Research and Development, Education, Priority 1: Strengthening capacity for quality research has been gratefully acknowledged.
| Publication | Impact Factor journals |
|---|---|
| Affiliation of speaker | Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology – VUT Brno, Technická 2896/2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic |
| Position of speaker | Research |
