Water Supply Siting and Management

Water is a critical resource for the health of ecosystems and the reproduction of society. Water siting refers to the process of transformation of this basic component of the biosphere into a resource able to satisfy human needs. Siting includes, therefore, both the places where water is captured for human activities and the technologies and institutional arrangements that make this transformation possible. Water management refers to the institutional, legal, and technological arrangements by which water is allocated temporally and spatially to the different users (agriculture, industry, urban, environmental flows).

Surface water and groundwater are the two main conventional sources of freshwater, and their use entails different technologies of capture and also different institutions to regulate its use. Surface water of rivers and lakes can be directly ...