Urban Water Provisioning Systems and Household Water Security

水安全仍然是发展中世界快速增长的城市地区和发达国家贫困地区面临的一项重大挑战，在这些地区，尽管家庭获得管道水的机会增加，但不受管制和非正式的家庭供水做法仍然存在。城市供水是由供水商、联网管道、塑料罐、立管、水表、雨水和灰水收集罐以及运输和管理家庭用水的水车组成的，以帮助家庭应对和满足日常生活的需要。该项目研究了城市家庭如何以及为什么通过这些混合基础设施系统获得水，并测试了其在家庭水安全方面的功效，用水安全被定义为健康生活所需的可靠、充足和负担得起的水。该项目将在巴西大都市福塔莱萨进行，那里的家庭供水反映了发展中国家供水的典型配置。研究成果将对混合供水系统的好处和局限性提供有意义的见解，并为发展干预措施、供水技术创新和基础设施投资提供信息。调查人员将创建一个公开的在线门户网站，传播项目信息和照片、研究成果以及一个计算工具，使家庭用水安全指标标准化，以便进行跨区域比较，使研究人员能够检查家庭用水不安全对公共卫生和水基础设施规划等不同领域的影响。该项目还将深化巴西和美国研究人员之间的研究网络，通过其研究设计扩大代表性不足群体在科学领域的参与，并通过培训一名计算机科学本科生和一名地理研究生，为培养具有全球竞争力的STEM劳动力做出贡献。受管制和不受管制的供水系统的出现回避了其对人类发展和水安全的效力的问题：混合城市供水系统是增加还是减少家庭用水安全？什么样的正式和非正式技术和做法能加强或减少家庭用水安全？不同的混合供水系统在家庭用水安全方面比较如何？该项目的主要社会科学贡献是通过采用定性（观察；开放式和半结构化访谈），参与性（照片声音）和定量（调查）方法的混合来回答这些问题。研究者将描述和发展供水的类型，评估家庭如何与现有系统相互作用，并在选定的城市社区测量家庭一级的水安全。根据调查数据计算出的家庭用水安全指标可用于统计检验和建立水不安全与供水类型、收入、教育和健康等几个因素之间的关系模型。该项目将提供新的经验数据，以开展更广泛的理论辩论，讨论共存的好处、集中式管道供水网络作为现代供水理想的有效性，以及更广泛的城市水治理。

Water security remains a major challenge for rapidly growing urban areas of the developing world and impoverished areas in developed countries where unregulated and informal domestic water provisioning practices persist despite increases in household access to piped water. Urban water provision is an assemblage of water vendors, networked pipes, plastic jugs, standpipes, water meters, rainwater and greywater collection tanks, and water trucks that convey and manage domestic water provision to help households cope and meet needs of everyday life. This project examines how and why urban households obtain water through these hybrid infrastructure systems and tests their efficacy in terms of household water security, defined as reliable, adequate and affordable water for a healthy life, using a scaled metric developed by the investigator. The project will be conducted in metropolitan Fortaleza, Brazil, where domestic water provision reflects typical configurations of water provision in the developing world. Research outcomes will provide meaningful insights as to the benefits and limitations of hybrid water-provisioning systems and inform development interventions, technological innovations for water provision, and infrastructure investments. Investigators will create a publicly available online portal to disseminate project information and photos, research findings, and a computational tool to standardize the household water security metric for cross-regional comparisons, allowing researchers to examine impacts of household water insecurity on diverse areas such as public health and water infrastructure planning. The project will also deepen research networks between Brazilian and US researchers, broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science through its research design, and contribute to the development of a globally competitive STEM workforce by training one computer science undergraduate and one geography graduate student. The emergence of regulated and unregulated water provisioning systems begs the question of its efficacy for human development and water security: Do hybrid urban water systems increase or decrease household water security? What particular configuration of formal and informal technologies and practices enhances or reduces household water security? How do different hybrid water-provisioning systems compare in terms of household water security? The major social scientific contribution of this project is to answer these questions by employing a mix of qualitative (observation; open-ended and semi-structured interviews), participatory (photovoice), and quantitative (survey) methods. The investigator will describe and develop a typology of water provision, assess how households interact with the existing systems, and measure household-level water security in selected urban communities. The household water security metric calculated from the survey data can be used to statistically test and model the relationship of water insecurity to several factors, including water-provisioning type, income, education, and health. This project will provide new empirical data to engage larger theoretical debates on the benefits of coexistence, the efficacy of centralized, piped water networks as the modern ideal of water provision, and urban water governance, more broadly.