Quantifying urban water supply security under global change

Urban water supply security is commonly measured in terms of per capita water availability at the city level. However, the actual services that citizens receive are influenced by several components, including (1) a city's access to water, (2) infrastructure for its treatment, storage and distribution, (3) financial capital for building and maintaining infrastructure, and (4) management efficacy for regulating and operating the water system. These four types of "capital" are required for the provision of public water supply services. A fifth capital “community adaptation” is needed when public services are insufficient. Here, we develop and test an integrated framework for the quantification of urban water supply security based on these five capitals. “Security” involves three dimensions: 1) the level of system function (i.e., supply services); 2) risks to these services; and 3) robustness of system functioning. We apply this Capital Portfolio Approach (CPA) to seven urban case studies selected from a wide range of hydro-climatic and socio-economic regions on four continents. Detailed data on urban water infrastructure and services were collected in two cities, and key stakeholder interviews and household surveys were conducted in one city. Additional cities were assessed based on publicly available utility and globally available datasets. We find that in cities with high levels of public services, adaptive capacity remains inactive, while cities with high levels of water insecurity rely on community adaptation for self-provision of services. Inequality in the capacity to adapt leads to variable levels of urban water security and the vulnerability of the urban poor. Results demonstrate the applicability of the presented framework for the assessment of individual urban water systems, as well as for cross-city comparison of any type of cities. We discuss implications for policy and decision-making.