| Over the past century, the effects of urbanization in the United States have been profound; urban populations have come to represent the majority of the population, and because of this change we have not only drastically altered the way in which we view and use resources, but how we function as a society. To thrive, urban centers require constant inputs of resources, such as water. However, over the past fifty years, rapidly increasing urban water demands have strained water supplies to the point where serious concerns over urban water scarcity now exist. Despite these concerns, there has been relatively little progress made towards better understanding urban water availability, vulnerability and management at the national level.;To address this lack of information, the work presented here collected information on all urban areas throughout the coterminous U.S. with populations greater than 100,000 (n=255) to identify 1) the current state of water availability and vulnerability in urban areas, 2) the relationship between water availability and urban water management responses to stress, 3) the role of complexity in urban utility operations and finances, 4) collaborative participation in urban water management as well as 5) the emergence of complexity over time in urban water systems.;Results from this work revealed that 1) approximately 25% of the US population resides in an urban area where low average annual water availability is an issue. Water vulnerability analyses, however, showed that over half of the population experiences at least a moderate level of vulnerability, either due to source inflow variability, or poor water availability. In locations where water availability was low, 2) a positive correlation was found between availability and both the complexity of the water supply infrastructure and water supply management. In addition, research revealed that urban areas who shared sources also had higher levels of infrastructure and management complexity. When assessing 3) costs within the urban water complexity paradigm, results indicated that water provision processes scale across urban utility population size with economies of scale. Using a combined metric to measure total operational complexity of each utility, results showed that in general, the level of complexity was higher than expected, and that higher complexity was correlated to higher overall costs. When utilities were assessed for their 5) level of collaborative participation, results indicated that over the past five years, collaborative participation has risen within urban utilities, and has coincided with a shift away from supply-based management towards a more balanced use of supply- and demand-based management strategies as well as an increase in the importance utilities place on water management plans. Finally, 6) when urban water complexity was examined over time, distinct patterns and trends emerged between disparate case studies. Similar threads of complexity are thought to run though all urban water management systems. (Full text of this dissertation may be available via the University of Florida Libraries web site. Please check http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/etd.html). |
