Building socio-hydrological resilience “improving capacity for building a socio hydrological system resilience”

Abstract

AbstractIn response to the climate change, hydrologic and environmental changes and increased uncertainties, implication of water resilience in a context of water governance is essential for improved management. This study aims to answer the following questions: 1) what are different types of resilience with regard to its several definitions, 2) what is the relationship between resilience, trend and performance in water governance. This research applied literature reviews (as theoretical approach) and interviews with local water managers (as experimental approach) to develop better resilient plan under extreme events. This study compared the results of reviewed articles with results that we obtained from interviews with water managers in a case study area in order to develop a resilience planning under extreme events. The research has analyzed the resilience for water management based on theoretical and empirical knowledge and also provided some helpful recommendations for building system resilience for the future. The analysis of the findings shows that sufficient resilience in each society depends considerably on water resources planning (implied by the government) and also resilience in water supply infrastructure (designed by engineers). In addition, in order to get a high level of resilience, integration of ecological knowledge, water supplies, government’s regulation/legislation, engineering projects and humans’ interaction, is necessary. Moreover, the results indicate that failures and hydrologic catastrophes are mainly as a result of big gaps between these elements and also a lack of integrated approach between water-institutions and the environment in water management.