This document is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree: Master of Architecture [Professional] at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in the year 2014. / No matter the reasons for the birth of a city, water sits at the very heart ensuring a healthy working population. Johannesburg is one of the only cities in the world that has no major water source of its own and as a result has its water pumped uphill from the Vaal Dam into the city. At the same time the city faces a crisis that is based on both the supply and demand for water. In South Africa, an already water stressed country, it is predicted that precipitation will reduce over the next century, reducing runoff and the supply of fresh water together with demand eventually over taking supply. Through rethinking how the inner city of Johannesburg deals with the saving, purifying and redistribution of its available surface water, the idea of water infrastructure can become something more than a subconscious operation controlled from a far off location and pumped unsustainably back into the city, and more like a series of upgraded machines dispersed about the city within localized contexts, supplementing the existing vital operations on a very obvious and conscious level in order to protect its populations by better protecting it’s most important resource of all. Located within the Maboneng Precinct and more specifically located over a channel of water that becomes the Braamfontein Spruit, this thesis aims at designing a building that will incorporate a water treatment facility together with research laboratories to purify grey water to a standard that is usable for most needs including drinking. Water however does not exist by itself when placed within the context of any environment that has an established infrastructural system. It exists together with the many various machines and pipes hidden from our everyday lives; they are the subconscious networks of the city’s mind, constantly working in the back(under)ground to maintain a reliable flow and quality while the populations go about their conscious, daily functions. The aim is twofold; firstly to show how developing technologies can be experimented on a smaller neighbour-hood scale in order to encourage the development of new thinking and secondly, by developing a Water treatment facility and laboratory coupled with daily social functions as well as offices sited in an urban environment, I hope to show that infrastructural projects that are usually located on the outskirts of cities, away from every day activity, can enhance the civic quality of an urban space. With every system becoming more reliant on technology, water needs to be seen not only as an entity that exists within the natural cycles of the planet, but one that also exists very much within the mechanized systems of the city’s infrastructure, with its availability relying heavily on those systems that manage it as well as the daily social functions that hinge off of it.

This dissertation in environmental history is concerned with human landscapes of groundwater extraction. Using temporal and spatial comparison, it examines the role of groundwater tunnel-wells and human understandings of groundwater availability in the Western Desert of Egypt; the Balearic Islands of Spain; and Iran. In an Epilogue and final chapter, it examines conceptions of 20th-century expertise for environmental knowledge and economic development.

Bibliography: leaves 61-64. This thesis reviews the sustainability of water resource management in Singapore and adequacy of the water conservation efforts put up by its government, population and industries. The write-up deliberates on the various trans-national water issues faced by the small Republic, interactions within its water sector and with the rest of the economy, management of its water supply and demand, as well as the various problems and challenges confronted by the country. This study is intended to highlight the relative wisdom of reducing water demand over pursuing supply solutions.

Women are increasingly being recognised internationally as essential actors in successful water supply management. Despite this, women are nevertheless still being excluded from water management activities which have proved to frequently result in water project failure. This has great consequences for water supply and water distribution capacity and efficiency. Women‟s exclusion often stems from traditional and deeply rooted gender differences where women, compared to men, are not given the same rights and opportunities. Therefore, in particular focuses in this study are cultural barriers and socio-economic obstacles and challenges that may hinder female participation. Although Ghana is considered to have rich water resources, the production, distribution and use of water is not efficient, sufficient, or sustainable. This impedes the country‟s socio-economic development. Most affected are women and children as they are often directly linked to the water source through their role as water collectors. In relation to this, the study investigates the importance of women‟s participation in water management within the Republic of Ghana. Furthermore, the study examines the efficiency and adequacy of measures and actions implemented to improve female participation in water supply management.  For data collection, a case study approach was adopted including an in-depth literature review, interviews with essential actors in Ghana and document analysis of Ghana‟s National Water Policy and National Gender and Children Policy. Interviews and documents were analysed with a content analysis and a comparative analysis approach.  The study found that women in Ghana, despite acknowledging their important role in Ghanaian water „society‟, experience great limitations in their participation in water management. Traditional norms and practices constitute a major obstacle together with a strongly male-dominated society that often prevents women from participating in the public sphere. The study indicates that there is a need to reform the legal system and the procedures of enforcement to encourage female participation in the water management. Furthermore, the Government of Ghana ought to improve financial, human, and material support within its agencies and associates to facilitate and enable female involvement. Moreover, there is a great need to improve women‟s rights to, and attendance in, education. Additionally, raising the awareness of gender and women‟s issues in general is crucial in order to initiate changes of traditional norms and practices and consequently improve their participation in the water management. By reforming Ghanaian women‟s situation, their role and status will be strengthened, not only within water management, but as well in the wider society.

This thesis is a combination of two separate studies which examine hydrologic data assimilation techniques: 1) to determine the applicability of assimilation of remotely sensed data in operational models and 2) to compare the effectiveness of assimilation and other calibration techniques. The first study examines the ability of Data Assimilation of remotely sensed microwave radiance data to improve snow water equivalent prediction, and ultimately operational streamflow forecasts. Operational streamflow forecasts in the National Weather Service River Forecast Center are produced with a coupled SNOW17 (snow model) and SACramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) model. A comparison of two assimilation techniques, the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) and the Particle Filter (PF), is made using a coupled SNOW17 and the Microwave Emission Model for Layered Snowpack model to assimilate microwave radiance data. Microwave radiance data, in the form of brightness temperature (TB), is gathered from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System at the 36.5GHz channel. SWE prediction is validated in a synthetic experiment. The distribution of snowmelt from an experiment with real data is then used to run the SAC-SMA model. Several scenarios on state or joint state-parameter updating with TB data assimilation to SNOW-17 and SAC-SMA models were analyzed, and the results show potential benefit for operational streamflow forecasting. The second study compares the effectiveness of different calibration techniques in hydrologic modeling. Currently, the most commonly used methods for hydrologic model calibration are global optimization techniques. While these techniques have become very efficient and effective in optimizing the complicated parameter space of hydrologic models, the uncertainty with respect to parameters is ignored. This has led to recent research looking into Bayesian Inference through Monte Carlo methods to analyze the ability to calibrate models and represent the uncertainty in relation to the parameters. Research has recently been performed in filtering and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques for optimization of hydrologic models. At this point, a comparison of the effectiveness of global optimization, filtering and MCMC techniques has yet to be reported in the hydrologic modeling community. This study compares global optimization, MCMC, the PF, the Particle Smoother, the EnKF and the Ensemble Kalman Smoother for the purpose of parameter estimation in both the HyMod and SAC-SMA hydrologic models.

This dissertation explores the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on critical infrastructures as defined by US Department of Homeland Security. The focus is on two important critical infrastructure systems – Water and Transportation. Critical infrastructures are always under the risk of threats such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, faulty management practices, regulatory policies, and defective technologies and system designs. Measuring the performance and risks of critical infrastructures is complex due to its network, geographic and dynamic characteristics and multiplicity of stakeholders associated with them. Critical infrastructure systems in crowded urban and suburban areas like the Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA) are subject to increased risk from geographic proximity. Moreover, climate is challenging the assumption of stationary (the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability) that is the foundation of water resource engineering and planning. Within this context, this research uses concepts of systems engineering such as 'systems thinking' and 'system dynamics' to understand, analyze, model, simulate, and critically assess a critical infrastructure system's vulnerability to extreme natural events and climate change. In most cases, transportation infrastructure is designed to withstand either the most extreme or close to the most extreme event that will add abnormal stresses on a physical structure. The system may fail to perform as intended if the physical structure faces an event larger than what it is designed for. The results of the transportation study demonstrate that all categories of roadways are vulnerable to climate change and that the magnitude of bridge vulnerability to future climate change is variable depending on which climate model projection is used. Results also show that urbanization and land use patterns affects the susceptibility of the bridge to failures. Similarly, results of the water study indicate that the WMA water supply system may suffer from water shortages accruing due to future droughts but climate change is expected to improve water supply reliability due to an upward trend in precipitation and streamflow. / Ph. D.

This thesis forms part of the emerging studies on the backlogs in municipal services delivery and the attendant emergence of the new social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. It examines four areas. These are: the backlogs in water services delivery; the consequent politicisation of the water services struggles; the breakdown of social citizenship; and the nature, forms and the repertoire of the collective action of the new social movements. The thesis is based on fieldwork research I undertook in 2002 on the water services struggles in Mpumalanga, an African township located outside the small town of Hammarsdale in Durban. The fieldwork research results reveal the demographic characteristics of Mpumalanga and, more crucially, the extent of the water services crisis. The results evaluate the nature and the gravity of the water services delivery backlogs. More importantly, they gauge the depth of their involvement in the water services struggles in Mpumalanga and the extent of their success. These are weighed against the reports of the new social movements' involvement in the township by the leftist-cum-intellectual activists in Durban and by the leftist and mainstream media reports. They also revealed a detailed picture of the state of collective action in Durban, unearthing the nature and functioning of the Concerned Citizens' Forum (CCF), an umbrella-body of Durban-based social movements. The study questions the hallowed standing of the CCF, by claiming, through detailed study and fieldwork observation, that the CCF is given to 'crowd renting', lack of transparency, disorderly decision-making, racial and leadership crises. The thesis also contextualises the collective action programmes of the CCF by situating them in Mpumalanga's neighbourhood politics. By doing so, the reader encounters ruling party local councillors, opposition party local councillors, CCF leaders and intellectual-cum-activists, youth activists and local council officials and bureaucrats. The collusion and conflicts between these parties and stakeholders bring into the equation political opportunism, careerism, and the ruthless pursuit of financial gains. All these parties and variables reveal a complex and ever-shifting picture of collective action and the contentious politics of the new social movements in Mpumalanga and Durban, amidst the looming crisis of the breakdown of social citizenship, cost recovery and the water services struggles.

<p>The aim of this investigation was to provide a framework or strategy for prioritising and implementing regional groundwater monitoring in the Olifants-Doorn Water Management (WMA) area. The general approach was to attempt to reconcile monitoring requirements with existing resources, while investigating the hypothesis that regional monitoring should focus on resource status monitoring. Groundwater science needs to focus on clarifying the sustainability options available to the stakeholders, and monitoring the chosen option. This can best be done by adopting an adaptive management approach to both the management of the groundwater resources, and the management of the monitoring programme.</p>

M.A. / The potential for conflict over water can one day become a reality. This so, especially when the world’s population is growing at a phenomenal rate. Regions that are vulnerable to this sort of conflict are semi-arid to arid in character. One can ask the question if conflict over water in these regions is possible. In examining the situation surrounding waterpolitics in two regions, and drawing comparisons, one can shed light on state’s interaction when it comes to the allocation of international water sources. The Middle East has vast experience in international water politics, while countries in Southern Africa seem to be still learning the game of international water politics. Using a framework for analysis, four case studies will be looked at. The Orange and Okavango Rivers are the subjects in Southern Africa where, it seems, cooperation on international water resources is the norm. The Tigris-Euphrates and the Jordan Rivers are considered in the case of the Middle East. Here a much higher level of conflict can be seen. The main reason for this difference in dealing with international water resources in the two regions seems to be the will (or lack thereof) among states to cooperate over water sources. In Southern Africa this will is evident, especially after 1994 when a new democratically elected government came to power in South Africa. In the Middle East, however, the region is still going about international politics in ways reminiscent of the Cold War. The theory of realism helps to explain the situation in this region, where mistrust plays a very big part in the interaction between states. Complex interdependence by contrast characterises the international political interaction between the states in the Southern African region. International and national water projects, in both regions, play a very big role in water politics. In both the regions there seem to be a number of these projects, that contributed to either conflict and/or cooperation between the states. In the Orange River it is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a cooperative endeavour between Lesotho and South Africa and in the Okavango Namibia’s Eastern National Water Carrier (ENWC). In the Tigris -Euphrates, Turkey’s Greater Anatolia Project, in the Tigris -Euphrates, is influencing the interaction between the three riparians, and the Jordan River had it’s share of projects in the past, and here Israel’s National Water Carrier had a role to play. / Prof. D.J. Geldenhuys Dr. M.M.E. Schoeman

M.Comm. / Southern Africa is considered by the rest of the world to be a water scarce region. Previously within the region water was not regarded as a high profile subject in the development process. A paradigm shift is required in the region to recognise the need to concentrate on demand management instead. The paper briefly examines the climatic conditions as a contributing factor to scarcity of the water resources. It further focuses on the human factor which is regarded as a factor that can be managed as opposed to the climatic conditions. In managing the human factor, the usage of water cannot remain the same as it was before the scarcity problem that the SADC region is faced with. It is also recognised that water resource is necessary for survival, therefore basic human requirements are examined. This scarcity makes water to be regarded as an economic good. The paper further explains the elements that make water to be regarded as an economic good. Water being an economic good, it commands a price. The study explains pricing the resource as the only method of making the population understand about the importance of the resource. Different pricing methods are explained in detail. To demonstrate this demand management of water the study interrogates three cities namely Soweto, Cape Town and Durban. In this interrogation the demand management techniques used and their efficiency are compared and contrasted to ascertain the efficiency of the chosen demand management techniques and the existence of gaps within these techniques.