Desalination from an Integrated Water Resources Management Perspective

With more than half of the world’s population living close to the oceans and a high percentage of theworld’s mega cities located near their shores, seawater desalination is an attractive option for coastalwater supply systems. Water scarcity in arid and semi arid regions has lately driven decision makers andplanners to investigate the viability of long transfers of desalinated sea water to water scarce locations.Arid and semi - arid zones are defined as areas where the rainfall patterns are inherently erratic andwhere, generally, precipitation is below potential evapotranspiration. The hydrological regime in theseareas is extreme and highly variable and globally, these areas face the greatest challenges to deliver andmanage freshwater resources. Problems are further exacerbated by population growth, increasingdomestic water use, expansion of agriculture, pollution and the threat of climate change. These areaswould often embrace the notion of water transfers from other catchments as an added water securityelement. However sustainable development considerations would remain as a source of concern undersuch circumstances. Limited access to water resources associated with climatic conditions of arid andsemi-arid regions have often been the source of competitions and conflicts amongst stakeholders.Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is seen worldwide as appropriate means of conflictresolution. IWRM is the response to the growing pressure on water resources systems as a result ofgrowing population and socio-economic developments. Major considerations associated with desalinationare those related to the environment and the economy with respect to energy consumption. The increasingcompetitiveness of desalination may be related to considerable improvements in the technical advancesthereby alleviating the problem to certain extents as far as the above considerations are concerned.However challenges remain in the face of the greater water resources management system where theoutput from desalination is one of a number of inputs affecting the system in an interactive way. Manycriteria and objectives may come into consideration at decision making level which would in turnnecessitate the use of Decision Support Systems (DSS). The DSS approach, in the framework ofutilisation of Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) tools to assess ranking of potential development scenarios,would become essential as part of the comprehensive decision making process.

کلیدواژه ها:

Desalination ، IWRM ، Arid and semi arid ، MCDM ، DSS