@phdthesis{GomezJaureguiAbdo2015, author = {G{\´o}mez J{\´a}uregui Abd{\´o}, Juan Pablo}, title = {Sustainable development of domestic water supply in emerging megacities : the case of the city of Guadalajara, Mexico}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:co1-opus4-36075}, school = {BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Water is a primordial resource for the development of urban agglomerations. Today, 50\% of the population worldwide is concentrated in urban settlements and 10 - 20\% of all worldwide freshwater consumption occurs in the domestic sector (UN: World water development report 3). By 2030, 60\% of the world's population will be living in urban settlements (UNESCO), and domestic freshwater consumption will rise by 70\% in 2025. Urban areas inflict high pressure on the local and even regional water sources, since the high population density requires large flow volumes in a restricted area, with often competing pressures on the water resource per se as well as for the space needed for water storage or aquifer recharge. This becomes complicated and even critical in areas where natural water availability is already scarce and urban demand is high due to large population sizes. Today 700 million people in 43 countries are living in water stress condition (Human Development Report 2006). Mexico, ranking 88 on a global scale in water availability per capita, is a clear example of this situation, where the most populated urban settlements, such as Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla or Queretaro are located in regions which concentrate only 31\% of the renewable water of the country (CONAGUA). Thus, the main question arises: How will the urban settlements develop a sustainable water supply now and in the future? The city of Guadalajara, in particular, has seen an extremely fast and chaotic development in the past three decades, where the population of the city increased from 1,354,000 inhabitants in 1970 to 4,064,000 in 2005; by 2020 Guadalajara is expected to overpass the 5 million inhabitants thus becoming a megacity. Nowadays, overall water consumption in the city is about 9.3 m3/sec. and it is estimated to be 10.3 m3/sec by 2030, with Lake Chapala as the main water source, supplying 55\% of the water demand. However, Lake Chapala has been confronted with several severe droughts which critically lowered its water table as was the case between 1998 and 2003 and due to its weak equilibrium droughts could be more recurrent in the future. As the water supply of Guadalajara is strongly linked to the faith of Lake Chapala, Guadalajara needs to reduce its pressure on the lake by adopting strategies based on sustainable development. The main goal of this research is to provide governments and decision makers with a robust tool that integrates the most amount of information possible but presents this information in a simple way, offering at the same time the possibility to detect the factors that need to be addressed in order to reach sustainability. The specific aim is to test the use of composite indices (CIs) to the case of the city of Guadalajara in the period of the year 2000 to 2009. CI is a holistic methodology in which independent variables can be aggregated into a single result. CIs thus allow for the comparison between different cases, the integration of qualitative and quantitative variables and the easy use by decision makers. We used 11 carefully selected variables from all three sectors of sustainability, economical, ecological and social, which were first normalized using ranging procedures and process capability indices, and aggregated by using the weighted geometric mean. A set of best strategies Guadalajara should follow are suggested in order to have a sustainable water supply in the future. With this study, we have been able to show that CIs are an effective tool for evaluating sustainability of domestic freshwater supply at local scale. Overall, Guadalajara reached a CI of 0.29 showing, that its domestic water supply is currently not sustainable. It was able to identify the following three main problems: a) lack of wastewater treatment with just less than 3\% of the waste water being treated; b) water loss in the distribution system, with 34\% of the water extracted being lost at some point in the distribution system (during treatment, in the pipelines and dweller connection to the distribution net); c) water availability, with increased flow volumes of Lake Chapala in the last six years, but only surpassing its natural storage twice (2004 and 2009). Nonetheless, a clear trend of continuous improvement could be seen overall in the past years with a decline in the domestic water consumption per capita to levels comparable to the one in Berlin, as a consequence of people awareness after the several drought Lake Chapala suffered in the beginning of the decade, and an increase in the level of access to piped water and connectivity to the drainage system to 94\% of the city's coverage in 2009 (on year 1990, the access to piped water was 89\% and the connectivity to the drainage system was 92\%).}, subject = {Sustainable development; Composite indices; Metropolitan zone of Guadalajara; Process capability indices; Domestic water supply; Nachhaltige Entwicklung; Gesamtindexes; Großstadtareal von Guadalajara; Prozessf{\"a}higkeitsindizes; H{\"a}usliche Wasserversorgung; Guadelajara; Haushalt; Trinkwasserversorgung; Nachhaltige Entwicklung}, language = {en} }