Author(s): Pankaj Kumar; Rajarshi Dasgupta

Linked Author(s): Pankaj Kumar, Rajarshi Dasgupta

Keywords: Socio-hydrology; Water resource management; Human well-being; Hydrological simulation

Abstract: Changes in demography, land use land cover along with local climate cumulatively affected local water bodies and resulted in unfavorable hydrological, ecological, and environmental changes in major river systems. Particularly, poor communities in the low-lying coastal zone are worse affected due to their poor adaptive capacities. The focal point for the vulnerability of these people lies in the water resources (drinking water availability, agricultural water quality, salt-water intrusion, flooding etc.) and the future interaction between human and water systems. With above background, socio-hydrology can be very relevant approach for enhancing social adaptive capacity as well as for developing resilient water environment. This work strives to explore how nexus of human–water relations can be applied to improve adaptive measures to maintain hydrological cycle along with managing local water needs. Socio-hydrological models is used to quantify the feedbacks between water resources and society at multiple scales with aim to expedite stakeholder participation for its sustainable management. The obtained result will be helpful to sketch projection of alternatives that explicitly account for different possible options for managing human-water interaction throughout the water cycle and hence human well-being.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC2521711920221612

Year: 2022