TY - JOUR
T1 - Integrated assessment of urban water supply security and resilience
T2 - Towards a streamlined approach
AU - Krueger, Elisabeth H.
AU - McPhearson, Timon
AU - Levin, Simon A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding in support of this research was provided by Princeton University’s Dean for Research, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the Office of the Provost (EHK). TM is supported by the US National Science Foundation through Grant Nos. 1444755, 1927167, and 193493. We thank Farah Hasan for contributing to the initial data compilation, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2022/7/1
Y1 - 2022/7/1
N2 - Urbanization and competing water demand, as well as rising temperatures and changing weather patterns, are manifesting as gradual processes that increasingly challenge urban water supply security. Cities are also threatened by acute risks arising at the intersection of aging infrastructure, entrenched institutions, and the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events. To better understand these multi-layered, interacting challenges of providing urban water supply for all, while being prepared to deal with recurring shocks, we present an integrated analysis of water supply security in New York City and its resilience to acute shocks and chronic disturbances. We apply a revised version of a recently developed, quantitative framework ('Capital Portfolio Approach', CPA) that takes a social-ecological-technological systems perspective to assess urban water supply security as the performance of water services at the household scale. Using the parameters of the CPA as input, we use a coupled systems dynamics model to investigate the dynamics of services in response to shocks - under current conditions and in a scenario of increasing shock occurrence and a loss of system robustness. We find water supply security to be high and current response to shocks to be resilient thanks to past shock experiences. However, we identify a number of risks and vulnerability issues that, if unaddressed, might significantly impact the city's water services in the mid-term future. Our findings have relevance to cities around the world, and raise questions for research about how security and resilience can and should be maintained in the future.
AB - Urbanization and competing water demand, as well as rising temperatures and changing weather patterns, are manifesting as gradual processes that increasingly challenge urban water supply security. Cities are also threatened by acute risks arising at the intersection of aging infrastructure, entrenched institutions, and the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events. To better understand these multi-layered, interacting challenges of providing urban water supply for all, while being prepared to deal with recurring shocks, we present an integrated analysis of water supply security in New York City and its resilience to acute shocks and chronic disturbances. We apply a revised version of a recently developed, quantitative framework ('Capital Portfolio Approach', CPA) that takes a social-ecological-technological systems perspective to assess urban water supply security as the performance of water services at the household scale. Using the parameters of the CPA as input, we use a coupled systems dynamics model to investigate the dynamics of services in response to shocks - under current conditions and in a scenario of increasing shock occurrence and a loss of system robustness. We find water supply security to be high and current response to shocks to be resilient thanks to past shock experiences. However, we identify a number of risks and vulnerability issues that, if unaddressed, might significantly impact the city's water services in the mid-term future. Our findings have relevance to cities around the world, and raise questions for research about how security and resilience can and should be maintained in the future.
KW - capital portfolio approach (CPA)
KW - New York City
KW - risk
KW - robustness
KW - social-ecological-technological systems (SETS)
KW - system dynamics modeling
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U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/ac78f4
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/ac78f4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85135726066
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 17
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 7
M1 - 075006
ER -