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With the ongoing drought surpassing a decade in Arizona, scholars, water managers and decision-makers have heightened attention to the availability of water resources, especially in rapidly growing regions where demand may outgrow supplies or outpace the capacity of the community water systems. Community water system managing entities and the biophysical

With the ongoing drought surpassing a decade in Arizona, scholars, water managers and decision-makers have heightened attention to the availability of water resources, especially in rapidly growing regions where demand may outgrow supplies or outpace the capacity of the community water systems. Community water system managing entities and the biophysical and social characteristics of a place mediate communities' vulnerability to hazards such as drought and long-term climate change. The arid southwestern Phoenix metropolitan area is illustrative of the challenges that developed urban areas in arid climates face globally as population growth and climate change stress already fragile human-environmental systems. This thesis reveals the factors abating and exacerbating differential community water system vulnerability to water scarcity in communities simultaneously facing drought and rapid peri-urban growth. Employing a grounded, qualitative comparative case study approach, this thesis explores the interaction of social, biophysical and institutional factors as they effect the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of community water systems in Cave Creek and Buckeye, Arizona. Buckeye, once a small agricultural town in the West Valley, is wholly dependent on groundwater and currently planning for massive development to accommodate 218,591 new residents by 2020. Amid desert hills and near Tonto National Forest in the North Valley, Cave Creek is an upscale residential community suffering frequent water outages due to aging infrastructure and lack of system redundancy. Analyzing interviews, media accounts and policy documents, a narrative was composed explaining how place based factors, nested within a regional institutional water management framework, impact short and long-term vulnerability. This research adds to the library of vulnerability assessments completed using Polsky et al.'s Vulnerability Scoping Diagram and serves a pragmatic need assisting in the development of decision making tools that better represent the drivers of placed based vulnerability in arid metropolitan regions.
ContributorsZautner, Lilah (Author) / Larson, Kelli (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
Nowadays there is a pronounced interest in the need for sustainable and reliable infrastructure systems to address the challenges of the future infrastructure development. This dissertation presents the research associated with understanding various sustainable and reliable design alternatives for water distribution systems. Although design of water distribution networks (WDN) is

Nowadays there is a pronounced interest in the need for sustainable and reliable infrastructure systems to address the challenges of the future infrastructure development. This dissertation presents the research associated with understanding various sustainable and reliable design alternatives for water distribution systems. Although design of water distribution networks (WDN) is a thoroughly studied area, most researchers seem to focus on developing algorithms to solve the non-linear hard kind of optimization problems associated with WDN design. Cost has been the objective in most of the previous studies with few models considering reliability as a constraint, and even fewer models accounting for the environmental impact of WDN. The research presented in this dissertation combines all these important objectives into a multi-objective optimization framework. The model used in this research is an integration of a genetic algorithm optimization tool with a water network solver, EPANET. The objectives considered for the optimization are Life Cycle Costs (LCC) and Life Cycle Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions (LCE) whereby the system reliability is made a constraint. Three popularly used resilience metrics were investigated in this research for their efficiency in aiding the design of WDNs that are able to handle external natural and man-made shocks. The best performing resilience metric is incorporated into the optimization model as an additional objective. Various scenarios were developed for the design analysis in order to understand the trade-offs between different critical parameters considered in this research. An approach is proposed and illustrated to identify the most sustainable and resilient design alternatives from the solution set obtained by the model employed in this research. The model is demonstrated by using various benchmark networks that were studied previously. The size of the networks ranges from a simple 8-pipe system to a relatively large 2467-pipe one. The results from this research indicate that LCE can be reduced at a reasonable cost when a better design is chosen. Similarly, resilience could also be improved at an additional cost. The model used in this research is more suitable for water distribution networks. However, the methodology could be adapted to other infrastructure systems as well.
ContributorsPiratla, Kalyan Ram (Author) / Ariaratnam, Samuel T (Thesis advisor) / Chasey, Allan (Committee member) / Lueke, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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Description
This research investigates the dialectical relationships between water and social power. I analyze how the coupled processes of development, water privatization, and climate change have been shaping water struggles in Chile. I focus on how these hydro-struggles are reconfiguring everyday practices of water management at the community scale and the

This research investigates the dialectical relationships between water and social power. I analyze how the coupled processes of development, water privatization, and climate change have been shaping water struggles in Chile. I focus on how these hydro-struggles are reconfiguring everyday practices of water management at the community scale and the ways in which these dynamics may contribute to more democratic and sustainable modes of water governance at both regional and national scales. Using a historical-geographical and multi-sited ethnographical lens, I investigate how different geographical projects (forestry, irrigated agriculture, and hydropower) were deployed in the Biobio and Santiago regions of Chile during the last 200 hundred years. I analyze how since the 1970s, these hydro-modernization projects have been gradually privatized, which in turn has led to environmental degradation and water dispossession affecting peasants and other rural populations. I frame these transformations using the political-ecological notion of hydrosocial assemblages produced by the different stages of the hydro-modernity—Liberal, Keynesian, Socialist, Neoliberal. I detail how these stages have repeatedly reshaped Chilean hydrosocial processes. I unpack the stages through the analysis of forestry, irrigation and hydropower developments in the central and southern regions of Chile, emphasizing how they have produced both uneven socio-spatial development and growing hydrosocial metabolic rifts, particularly during neoliberal hydro-modernity (1981-2015). Hydrosocial metabolic rifts occur when people have been separated or dispossessed from direct access and control of their traditional water resources. I conclude by arguing that there is a need to overcome the current unsustainable market-led approach to water governance. I propose the notion of a 'commons hydro-modernity', which is based on growing environmental and water social movements that are promoting a socio-spatial project to reassemble Chilean hydrosocial metabolic relations in a more democratic and sustainable way.
ContributorsTorres Salinas, Robinson (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Manuel-Navarrete, David (Committee member) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016