During the third decade of the 21st century, human societies across the world are facing significant water-related problems, such as ecosystem degradation, groundwater depletion, natural and anthropogenic droughts and floods, water-borne health issues, and deforestation. These problems are exacerbated by climate change, a phenomenon that has been accelerated due to human intervention in natural systems since the industrial revolution. There is an urgent need to better understand the interaction of hydrological systems in terms of climate variability and the anthropogenic factors that contribute to the dynamics and resilience of coupled human-water systems and effective risk management in the area of water resource management. Socio-hydrology is an interdisciplinary field that integrates natural and social sciences and aims to study the long-term dynamics of bidirectional feedback in coupled human-water systems. This book on socio-hydrology aims to compile cross-disciplinary scientific endeavors and innovations in research on the development, education, and application of coupled human-water systems. The articles published in this book represent diverse and broad aspects of water management in the context of socio-hydrology systems around the globe. The articles and ideas presented in this book represent a significant source of references for interdisciplinary water science programs and provide an excellent guide for experts involved in the future planning and management of water resources. This book is dedicated to friends of the Green Water-Infrastructure Academy and those who pursue cross-disciplinary water research, education, and management.

During the third decade of the 21st century, human societies across the world are facing significant water-related problems, such as ecosystem degradation, groundwater depletion, natural and anthropogenic droughts and floods, water-borne health issues, and deforestation. These problems are exacerbated by climate change, a phenomenon that has been accelerated due to human intervention in natural systems since the industrial revolution. There is an urgent need to better understand the interaction of hydrological systems in terms of climate variability and the anthropogenic factors that contribute to the dynamics and resilience of coupled human-water systems and effective risk management in the area of water resource management. Socio-hydrology is an interdisciplinary field that integrates natural and social sciences and aims to study the long-term dynamics of bidirectional feedback in coupled human-water systems. This book on socio-hydrology aims to compile cross-disciplinary scientific endeavors and innovations in research on the development, education, and application of coupled human-water systems. The articles published in this book represent diverse and broad aspects of water management in the context of socio-hydrology systems around the globe. The articles and ideas presented in this book represent a significant source of references for interdisciplinary water science programs and provide an excellent guide for experts involved in the future planning and management of water resources. This book is dedicated to friends of the Green Water-Infrastructure Academy and those who pursue cross-disciplinary water research, education, and management.

The book brings together high-quality research articles on advanced hydrological analysis, advanced computational methods, and the ecological and sociological aspects of urban watershed management under one umbrella. The rapid pace of urbanization, not accompanied by any farsighted, holistic plan, has reduced many cities in the developing world into multi-hazard areas. The most perceptible consequence of urbanization is the change in land-use and land cover, which in turn impacts hydrological systems. Accordingly, scientific studies on urban hydrology with due emphasis on ecological and sociological aspects under changing climate are vital to the appropriate design of urban landscapes and civil infrastructure works. This book addresses precisely these issues, offering a useful guide for environmentalists, hydrologists, and a broad range of socio-economic scientists exploring the environmental vulnerabilities arising from urbanization.

Bangladesh is a large delta, where most people live in the overpopulated floodplains. Flooding is a normal phenomenon, which causes much suffering. How to reduce this suffering through better managing floods is a big societal challenge. To date, societal initiatives to address this challenge mainly consist of the construction of embankments along the river bank, to control hydrological processes and ‘discipline’ the river. Yet, such embankments generate their own hydrological and societal responses in sometimes unexpected ways. The study of these interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and social processes is a new academic field, one that is particularly relevant in a dynamic delta such as Bangladesh. This research sets out to explore the phenomena, opportunities and risks generated by the interactions between physical and societal processes along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. It conceptualize these interactions as temporally dynamic and spatially diverse combinations of fighting and living with water. The research proposes the concept of "Socio-hydrological spaces (SHSs)" to enrich the study of socio-hydrology. A SHS is a geographical area in a landscape. Its particular combination of hydrological and social features gives rise to the emergence of distinct interactions and dynamics (patterns) between society and water. The SHSs concept suggests that the interactions between society and water are place-bound and specific because of differences in social processes, technological choices and opportunities, and hydrological dynamics. Through the concept of SHS, this research does not only contribute to advance the knowledge about socio-hydrological dynamics in Bangladesh, but also provides more general insights for flood risk management.

This book contains the papers presented at a conference co-organized by the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and the Wessex Institute of Technology to facilitate trans-disciplinary communication on issues related to the nature of water, and its use and exploitation by society. With adequate water supply becoming a critical issue in more and more area, \there is a great and urgent need to bridge the gap between the broad spectrum of social sciences and humanistic disciplines and the specialists in physical and natural sciences, biology, environmental sciences, and health. Many issues are also trans-national in nature and relate to rights of states and hence it is essential to discuss these at international level to arrive at equitable and binding solutions that will ensure the rights of society to quality water supplies. The book discusses The nature of water; Water as a human right; Water as the source of life; Water in a changing climate; Future water demands and adaptation strategies; Water resources contamination; Surface and sub-surface water resources; Irrigation and desertification; Water, sanitation and health; Transnational water rights; Legislation and controls; Water through the ages; Lessons to be learnt; and Water and disaster management.

Modern assessment of the state of the world's water resources for researchers and policy-makers.

During the past five decades, we have witnessed a tremendous evolution in water resource system management. Three characteristics of this evolution are of particular note: First, the application of the systems approach to complex water management problems has been established as one of the most important advances in the field of water resource management. Second, the past five decades have brought a remarkable transformation of attitude in the water resource management community towards environmental concerns and action to address these concerns. Third, applying the principles of sustainability to water resource decision-making requires major changes in the objectives on which decisions are based, and an understanding of the complicated inter-relationships between existing ecological, economic, and social factors. The Special Issue includes 15 contributions that offer insights into contemporary problems, approaches, and issues related to the management of complex water resources systems. It will be presumptuous to say that these 15 contributions characterize the success or failure of the systems approach to support water resources decision-making. However, these contributions offer interesting lessons from current experiences and highlight possible future work.