Abstract
Regional cities are having their unique water security challenges due to regional urban water contexts, regional socio-economic structure, and climate conditions. Regional urban community’s perceptions of water usage are expected to be different from the communities in large metropolitan cities. The city of Townsville is the largest regional city in the northern tropical region of the state of Queensland in Australia, and it is known to have its unique dry tropic climate condition. The city faced a water crisis due to a prolonged drought in 2013–2018. As part of this research, at first, a literature review was conducted to understand what water demand management (WDM) tools worked well during urban water crisis in different parts of the world. This paper then investigates how residential water usage changed with the changes in drought measures in the city of Townsville in the last decade. A minimum per capita residential water requirement is established for the study region to benchmark the effects of tools implemented in the region. The paper investigates the WDM policies implemented in the city of Townsville including when the policies were applied and the impacts and efficacy of these policies before water crisis, during water crisis and after water crisis. The most effective WDM tools identified are water restrictions, public awareness raising and education programmes. The impacts of water restriction policies and the perceptions of local water professionals on their success elements are also studied. The results are compared and the reasons behind the findings are investigated.
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Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this article. Water consumption data, water production and climate data used in this research can be accessed from the public websites of Townsville City Council (TCC) and Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), Australia.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the local City Council for supporting this research work by providing valuable information and feedback. It needs to be noted that the local water distribution authority does not take any responsibility on the reliability/accuracy of the information used for this research. The authors are grateful to the water professionals who participated in this research that yielded valuable information.
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This research work was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship provided by the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Government of Australia.
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RRB: assist in data collection, writing—review and editing and supervision. TRB: conceptualisation, methodology, data access and formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. AR: writing—review and editing and supervision.
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Ray Biswas, R., Ray Biswas, T. & Rahman, A. Benchmarking the Effects of Water Demand Management During Water Crisis in a Regional City. Environmental Management 72, 1277–1292 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-023-01862-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-023-01862-5