Rapid global changes (population growth, urbanisation and frequent extreme weather conditions) cumulatively affected local water bodies and resulted in unfavourable hydrological, ecological, and environmental changes in major river systems. Particularly, communities in the isolated riverine islands are worse affected due to their poor adaptive capacities, which are well documented in the contemporary literature. The focal point for the vulnerability of these people lies in the water resources (drinking water availability, agricultural water quality, saltwater intrusion, flooding, etc.) and the future interaction between humans and water systems. With the above background, socio-hydrology can be a very relevant approach for enhancing social adaptive capacity as well as for developing a resilient water environment. This proposed work strives to explore how the nexus of human–water relations can be applied to improve adaptive measures to maintain the hydrological cycle along with managing local water needs. Socio-hydrological models will be used to quantify the feedback between water resources and society at multiple scales with the aim of expediting stakeholder participation for sustainable management. The expected result will be helpful in sketching the projection of alternatives that explicitly account for plausible and co-evolving trajectories of the socio-hydrological system, which will yield both insights into cause–and–effect relationships and help stakeholders identify a safe functioning space.
Project • CRRP2019-01MY-Kumar