Abstract
Urban Water Security is essential in urban planning to manage cities’ water infrastructures and strengthen their water stress resilience and adaptive capacities. Decision making, governance and socio-economic factors play important roles in achieving Urban Water Security. Kolkata is a growing megacity in a developing country, which is facing rising pressures on water-environmental provisions due to the rapid population growth and urbanization and resultant governance and infrastructural issues. This review focusses on Kolkata, which is facing critical water issues, as a case study. The study presents an overview of the urban water (in)security and its dimensions in Kolkata city, such as water consumption and distribution in the city along with the changing land use-land cover of the city area, based on the results obtained from the satellite data-based land use-land cover classification, available literature, and documents from public institutions.
Highlights
Urbanization is a human-induced process and results in land use-land cover (LULC) change and concurrent alteration of the quantity and quality of surface and groundwater resources especially in the peri-urban areas [1,2]
The study presents an overview of the urban watersecurity and its dimensions in Kolkata city, such as water consumption and distribution in the city along with the changing land use-land cover of the city area, based on the results obtained from the satellite data-based land use-land cover classification, available literature, and documents from public institutions
The local scale of urban water security problems within the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area caused by land use-land cover changes over the last four decades and the resulting impacts on the existing infrastructure are addressed through the review of scientific literature and reports
Summary
Urbanization is a human-induced process and results in land use-land cover (LULC) change and concurrent alteration of the quantity and quality of surface and groundwater resources especially in the peri-urban areas [1,2]. Kolkata is blessed ecologically because it has, “the Ganga flowing beside its western end, traditionally huge groundwater reserve and wide wetlands area in its eastern fringe which naturally treats its waste water and turns that as raw water for fishery and agriculture.” [13] Despite these advantages, the city is at present increasingly running into water insecurity. 2025 Kolkata frequently will be hit by storms, cyclones, and hurricanes alongside extreme temperature and rainfall events These weather extreme events will affect directly the existing water-environment and socio-economic activities, bringing risks to human health and eco-system health [16,19]. The local scale of urban water security problems within the KMC area caused by land use-land cover changes over the last four decades and the resulting impacts (direct and indirect) on the existing infrastructure are addressed through the review of scientific literature and reports.
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