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To summarize,
IWRM involves:
• The system to be managed, such as a river basin system
• The management system, such as procedures and institutions to
decide about controls of the river basin system
• The related systems, such as the hydroelectric energy system or the
transportation system that is dependent on waterborne navigation
➢ The greatest degree of integration occurs at the third level where water as a
connector is managed to enhance the related sectors.
➢ Knowledge of these systemic behaviors enables you to see the big picture or to size
up the situation by gaining insight into the interrelationships among different
system elements and the feedback that occurs when the systems interact.
➢ While past experience and intuition are useful to size up a situation, a more formal
approach can be based on the discipline of systems thinking, which facilitates the
holistic analysis of problems through use of organized thinking.
➢ The common concept of systems thinking is to provide a framework to deal with
complexity. It does not offer magic solutions, but it may reduce ambiguity by
applying sharp thinking to complex situations (Weinberg 2001 ).
➢ At a high level, the system has two main subsystems, the city and the farm, and
each can be represented by the people involved or the human element.
➢ The overall system boundaries include both the city and the farm, and the flow
between them is polluted water.
➢ The pollution is caused by the lack of wastewater treatment by the city such that
untreated wastewater flows in the river and is the only water available for the
farmers to use.
➢ Because the water is polluted, it is of limited effectiveness and farm income is
low.
➢ Also, the people get sick due to the contaminants on their food, and this causes
further drops in farm income.
➢ The economy suffers due to lack of farm income, social impacts occur due to
sickness and poverty, and the environment suffers due to the water pollution.
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING, MU,2021
Systems Thinking as an IWRM Tool
➢ Systems thinking can be especially useful to foster understanding of the underlying causes of
water conflicts, which occur often in IWRM
➢ Situations require analysis of both the systems to be managed and the management systems.
➢ The systems to be managed may involve physical, natural, and/or human components, and
the management systems involve people, resources, and procedures.
➢ Classification of systems problems involves many descriptors, but a simple approach
involves five:
i. The problem attributes,
ii. The scenario,
iii. The attributes of the system to be managed,
iv. The attributes of the management system, and
v. The process and phase of problem-solving.
➢ Most water problems (other than highly structured technical issues) have social and technical
components and can be conceptualized through paradigms such as the coupled natural-human
or social-technical systems.
iv. Modeling.
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING, MU,2021
Tools of Systems Thinking
1. Systems Identification
2. System Diagrams
➢ System diagrams can be drawn in different ways but their purpose is to map out how a
system is built from its elements
➢ For example, a water supply system is built from a source of supply, a treatment plant,
and a distribution system. Each of these has sub elements, such as the main lines and
smaller pipes of a water distribution system. A system diagram will show how the
change in one element will reverberate and affect other elements, which may in turn
affect the original element
➢ Systems thinking is about explaining how a system works, but the problem- solving process
is inherent in it.
➢ The problem-solving process seems linear, but in fact it involves feedback and adjustments.