Abstract
The increasing demand of water for different uses, together with the variable availability of this resource, which is due to the increasingly frequent periods of drought, make necessary to undertake a set of structural and contextual actions to cope with the permanent or temporary scarcity situations. Within the search for solutions to the progressively more widespread situation of limited water availability for agriculture, this paper aims to state the role that engineering can play to face up this deficit, taking into account the social, economic, and environmental issues of water, together with the priority of uses. Structural measures can help to:1) increase the water availability (increased or more flexible supply through reservoirs, water transfers, water rights interchange centres, desalination, reuse, aquifer recovery, and conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater), and 2) rationalize water consumption by improving demand management, including the irrigation management improvement, as well as maximizing the efficiency of irrigation systems. In addition to these measures, other social issues can be implemented through public awareness and education, adequate economic policies, legislative adaptation, and technical support to municipalities and water use associations. Thus, to face up water scarcity in a region it is necessary to identify the different water sources, including alternative sources such as desalination and reuse, and develop an appropriate model of management as well as infrastructure for water storage and regulation.
Highlights
Water is traditionally considered a renewable resource
The United Nations Development Programme requested a definition of meteorological drought from The World Climate Programme (WCP, 1986), and the following criterion was proposed: drought is present in a region when the annual precipitation rate is lower than 60% of the normal precipitation rate during two consecutive years or in over 50% of the region
One of the best strategies to face water scarcity is the implementation of management systems, which utilize models and tools to estimate the available water resources in each region and its variation in time
Summary
Water is traditionally considered a renewable resource. Indiscriminate increased water demand results in reduced quality and, sometimes, in changes in temporal and spatial distribution. The consequences of these effects are not always adequately predicted and could have extreme environmental, social, and economic impacts. Freshwater is unequally distributed throughout the world, as it is linked to precipitation. The continent with the most water resources is Asia, followed by South America, Africa, North America, Europe, and Australia. Availability per inhabitant follows an inverse trend, due to population density in those countries
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