ABSTRACT
Considerable integrated water resources management (IWRM) work has concentrated on redressing causes of scarce water resources with efforts typically focused at transboundary, national, basin or water utility scales (Dziegielewski et al. 1992, Wolf and Murakami 1995, Wilchfort and Lund 1997, Scott et al. 2003, Fisher et al. 2005). The starting point is to identify a wide variety of actions that increase supplies, improve qualities, decrease demand or alter demand timing to improve system performance. Then comes characterization of actions by costs, benefits and quantities and qualities of water provided or conserved. Finally, systems analysis is used to develop a mix of cost-effective and waterefficient actions that improve service levels and reliabilities given physical and institutional constraints.
