Abstract By 2050 it is predicted that 67% of the world population is expected to be living in urban areas, with the most rapid levels of urbanisation taking place in developing countries. Urbanisation is often directly linked to the degradation of environmental quality, including quality of water, air and noise. Concurrently, the climate is changing. Together, the negative impacts of climate change and urbanisation pose significant challenges, especially in developing countries where resources to mitigate these impacts are limited. Focusing on the Berg River Catchment in South Africa, which is experiencing increasing levels of urbanisation, the impacts of climate change, the ‘wicked problem’ of service delivery to the historically disadvantaged within a developing country, persistent infrastructure backlogs, and where high unemployment is prevalent, this paper explores the increasing water quality risks due to climate change and rapid urban development and the likely direct and indirect economic impacts that this will have on the agriculture sector, which is a key contributor to the regional and national economy. The results give support to the need to invest in risk mitigation measures including the provision of basic services, the upgrading and maintenance of wastewater treatment plants and investing in ecological infrastructure.

Abstract Fuzzy VIKOR, a decision making technique, is applied to prioritize 224 sub-catchments of Mahanadi Basin, India. Seven geomorphology based criteria viz., drainage density, bifurcation ratio, stream frequency, texture ratio, form factor, elongation ratio and circulatory ratio are estimated from five digital elevation models (DEMs). Triangular membership functions were formulated for each criterion for each sub-catchment which are based on individual values obtained from individual DEM's. Entropy method is employed for estimation of weights of criteria and a similar mechanism is followed while formulating triangular membership function for weights. Eight groups are formulated with a number of sub-catchments in each group as 5, 26, 69, 65, 29, 11, 12, 7 for taking up conservation measures. Effect of varying strategy weight, (ν) on the ranking pattern is also studied and found that ν value effects ranking pattern significantly.

Abstract Distribution of most prevalent disinfection by-products, trihalomethanes (THMs) in relation to treatment technology and common water quality parameters (turbidity, conductivity, color, pH, and residual chlorine) was examined for two water supply schemes (WSS) in Sri Lanka (locations: Greater Kandy-WSS (GKWSS) (80.56–80.66 °E, 7.28–7.38 °N) and Kandy South-WSS (KSWSS) (80.49–80.63 °E, 7.21–7.30 °N). In both treatment plants, only CHCl3 and CHCl2Br were detected in appreciable concentrations and total THMs (TTHMs) values were well below the WHO limits (80 μg/L). TTHMs variations ranged from 0 to 16 μg/L and 0 to 54 μg/L in GKWSS and KSWSS, respectively. Highest TTHM value (54 μg/L) was found in KSWSS which employs pulsation treatment technology. Correlations between CHCl3 and CHCl2Br in both water schemes are noteworthy, but THM levels relate to most of the water quality parameters ambiguously. However, a distinct relationship is observed between THM levels and degree of chlorination, resident time, pipeline corrosion, and temperature. THM formation increased towards the boundaries of most of the sub-water supply schemes (SWSS).