Water demand management in Mediterranean regions

Water sustainability needs a balance between demand and availability: 1) Water demand management: demand may be managed by suppliers and regulations responsible persons, using measures like invoicing, consumptions measurement and users education in water conservation measures; 2) Augmentation of water supply: availibility may be augmented by infrastructural measures, waste water reuse, non-conventional resources and losses reduction. Water Demand Management is about achieving a reduction in the use of water resources, normally through increased efficiency of water application. The main objective of this paper is the application of these concepts to Mediterranean regions.

Tourism and sustainable economic development

The interest in sustainable tourism reflects the growing recognition that the industry, tourists and natural resources are inter-linked and that these elements depend each other for successful long term sustainability at appropriate decision-making levels. While much research has been done on how to progress towards more sustainable kind of tourism, much needs to be undertaken to foster the practical application of the concept. This paper is part of this ongoing effort. Having expressed the exigency to build the debate on sustainable tourism on sound economic foundations, and having outlined the capacity of economists to provide such theoretical foundations by stretching the orthodox economic theory to incorporate sustainable issues, the paper shows the evolution of European policy for sustainable tourism together with an analysis of strategies and instruments which appear to be necessary if we are to reconcile tourism development with the protection and conservation of the environment.

Water demand management in Mediterranean regions

Water sustainability needs a balance between demand and availability: 1) Water demand management: demand may be managed by suppliers and regulations responsible persons, using measures like invoicing, consumptions measurement and users education in water conservation measures; 2) Augmentation of water supply: availibility may be augmented by infrastructural measures, waste water reuse, non-conventional resources and losses reduction. Water Demand Management is about achieving a reduction in the use of water resources, normally through increased efficiency of water application. The main objective of this paper is the application of these concepts to Mediterranean regions

Tourism and sustainable economic development

The interest in sustainable tourism reflects the growing recognition that the industry, tourists and natural resources are inter-linked and that these elements depend each other for successful long term sustainability at appropriate decision-making levels. While much research has been done on how to progress towards more sustainable kind of tourism, much needs to be undertaken to foster the practical application of the concept. This paper is part of this ongoing effort. Having expressed the exigency to build the debate on sustainable tourism on sound economic foundations, and having outlined the capacity of economists to provide such theoretical foundations by stretching the orthodox economic theory to incorporate sustainable issues, the paper shows the evolution of European policy for sustainable tourism together with an analysis of strategies and instruments which appear to be necessary if we are to reconcile tourism development with the protection and conservation of the environment

The role of tourism in sustainable economic development

Tourism is now one of the world's largest industries and one of its fastest growing economic sectors. For many countries tourism is seen as a main instrument for regional development, as it stimulates new economic activities. Tourism may have a positive economic impact on the balance of payments, on employment, on gross income and production, but it may also have negative effects, particularly on the environment. Unplanned and uncontrolled tourism growth can result in such a deterioration of the environment that tourist growth can be compromised. The environment, being the major source of tourist product, should therefore be protected in order to have further growth of tourism and economic development in the future. This is specially true with regard to tourism based on the natural environment as well as on historical-cultural heritage. Sustainable tourism has three interconnected aspects: environmental, socio-cultural, and economic. Sustainability implies permanence, so sustainable tourism includes optimum use of resources, including biological diversity; minimization of ecological, cultural and social impacts; and maximization of benefits for conservation and local communities. It also refers to the management structures that are needed to achieve this. The paper provides a theoretical framework for sustainable tourism. It comprises two parts. The first part presents general views on tourism and sustainable economic development, and some opinions on the relationship between tourism and the environment. The second part concentrates on strategies and policy instruments

Reliability surrogate measures for water distribution system design: Comparative analysis

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Because of the large computational burden associated with the direct assessment of reliability, the indirect indices of reliability have recently received more attention in the framework of water distribution system design. Two new energy-related indices for reliability evaluation (i.e., available power index and pipe hydraulic resilience index) are developed in this paper. The performance of these new indices is evaluated and compared with that of four existing indices (three other energy-related indices-i.e., resilience index, network resilience index, and modified resilience index-and the entropy-based method, i.e., diameter-sensitive flow entropy) according to the following two-step methodology. In the first step, the application of the multiobjective optimization makes it possible to determine optimal network configurations that trade-offthe installation cost (to be minimized) against the generic indirect reliability index (to be maximized). In the second step, the performance of the optimal solutions in terms of explicit reliability assessment is examined under conditions in which the original network is perturbed by applying demand variations and random pipe failures to account for future operating uncertainties. The Hanoi and the Fossolo benchmark networks are used as case studies. The results obtained show that energy-based indices yield an overall superior estimate of reliability in comparison with the diameter-sensitive flow entropy. Furthermore, the new indices show some advantages in the evaluations performed under demand and pipe failure uncertainties.This study is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51178141)