About this Research Topic

Background

This Research Topic is a part of the Delft 2021: 1st Sociohydrology Conference series. To view the other sessions please follow the links below:
Innovating a New Knowledge Base for Water Justice Studies: Hydrosocial, Sociohydrology, and Beyond
Scale Issues in Human-Water Systems
Innovative Sensing, Observing, Measuring and Analysing Human-Water Data
Solutions to Water Crises (Related to Actual Interventions)

Since sociohydrology has been formally introduced as a new theme in hydrology in 2012, literature has been growing, contributing to sociohydrology, mainly through representing the coupling of human-water systems. Human systems are represented by various forms of economics, social dimension, policy , and trade , but mostly based on water and supply-centric approaches where systems are driven by water availability, abundance, or scarcity and the need to manage it wisely. Multi-centric approaches, representing water as an inseparable part of, e.g. water-energy-food nexus, aim to represent the human systems through comprehensive societal need for integrated resources. Also, new studies on demand-centric approaches are making their way into the literature. In all these approaches, the coupling and feedback mechanism of the natural-human systems takes various forms, raising issues of similarities and differences between them and sociohydrology.

In this Research Topic, we aim to present the coupling and the coevolution of water and human systems with all its possible dimensions and single-centric or multi-centric approaches under a comprehensive sociohydrological framework. Although this Topic is not aimed to be a debate about sociohydrology, there is an embedded, overarching goal of contributing to its live definition and scope, and its relation to some of the existing themes of integrated water resource management and water-energy-food nexus.

For this Research Topic, we are calling for contributions on:
• Data-based analysis and/or modeling of human interactions with hydrology and water resource systems, with emphasis on feedbacks, two-way interactions, and coevolution;
• Demand- and societal need-driven water resource systems and its evolving interaction with resource (e.g. water, food, energy) security and governance;
• Analysis and modeling of the feedback loops between water resources availability, change, demand, and policy, and the resulting intuitive and counter-intuitive evolving phenomena such as timing and magnitude of rebound of water demand;
• Modeling virtual water trade in the form of food and energy, its drivers and motivation, and with emphasis on its two-way interaction with local hydrology and water resource systems and the sustainability of water resource use;
• Assessing human behavior uncertainty in integrated water resources governance and infrastructure planning and management; and
• New techniques and/or innovative use of existing techniques to model sociohydrological systems and interactions, including system dynamics, agent-based modeling, input-output tables.

About Delft 2021: 1st Sociohydrology Conference-Sociohydrology has seen spectacular growth since its inception seven years ago. Until now, it has been difficult to bring the entire community together, including especially social scientists, water managers and stakeholders under one umbrella. In view of the urgency of the societal challenges and the need for a unified, holistic and inclusive approach to address these grand challenges, there is an urgent need for a larger, international conference. Delft 2021: Advancing Sociohydrology Conference, the first of its kind, will provide the necessary visibility and wider scope to attract a cross-section of water scientists and stakeholders

Keywords: Multi-centric approaches, Demand-centric approaches, Policy analysis, Virtual Water Trade modeling, water-centric approaches

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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