An Integrated and High-resolution Assessment of Territorial Water
Vulnerability: The Case of the Gran Valparaiso Conurbation, Central
Chile
Abstract
Water security is a key goal to advance towards sustainable development
and an increasingly hard challenge in a climate change context.
Achieving water security requires advancing towards equitable access to
water services in sufficient quantity and quality to satisfy multiple
needs and uses and to ensure the sustainability of such services to
various natural and anthropogenic threats. We introduce the notion of
‘territorial water vulnerability’ (TWV) as a measure of the propensity
of a particular territory to be or become unable to satisfy relevant
water needs and uses adequately as a result of its structural condition
to be negatively affected by socio-natural threats and stressors. On
this basis, we develop a set of territorial indicators of sensitivity
and response capacity for drinking urban water services and apply them
to the Gran Valparaiso conurbation on the central coast of Chile. A
particularly relevant territory considering the extreme water scarcity
of the contributing catchment. A fuzzy logic approach was used to
develop a single TWV index at the census block level; through cluster
analysis, census blocks profiles are identified whose common
characteristics explain their high vulnerability levels. This paper
provides at least three relevant contributions to fill gaps identified
in the existing literature): (1) an analytical framework to assess urban
water security observed from households, considering social dimensions,
(2) a methodological approach to carry out high-resolution analysis that
considers the ecological, technical and social systems and (3) evidence
to guide public policies in the scarcely studied Chilean Case.