A new technical paper written by Junaid Seria, Head of Cat Model
R&D and Governance at SCOR Global P&C, provides some useful resilience
lessons resulting from the water crisis that hit Cape Town’s communities and
businesses earlier this year.
The issue of water security
and supply management is expected to be a growing threat to businesses in many
areas of the world. In fact, by as early as 2030, global demand for fresh water
could outstrip supply by more than 40 percent if no changes are made to how we
manage water.
Cape Town’s recent water
crisis provides useful insights to help understand the interplay between
climate change, socio-economic factors and water supply when assessing the resilience
of cities to natural disasters.
The technical paper, entitled
‘Water security: the case of Cape Town’s severe water shortage’ captures the
following lessons:
· A
strong dependence on a single water source tests water supply in drought years
and could cause significant strain during consecutive drought years.
· Even
with redundancy, water supply systems could fail when in extreme climate
scenarios.
· Demand
will continue to outstrip supply unless significant interventions are
implemented.
· Water
shortages can emerge due to several reasons. Water management departments need
to conduct counterfactual studies of past water crises that have affected other
large cities to better learn how to plan for these disasters.
· When
a crisis looms, demand can be managed efficiently. Cities should assess the
tools employed by the City of Cape Town and local communities to cut demand.
· Droughts
are challenging to predict.
· Climate
change is considered a threat multiplier.
Read the original
article on https://www.scor.com/sites/default/files/2018_11_tnl_water_security_web.pdf
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