Chapter 2
Terminology
As will be seen, the theory of this book is vital for water policy, planning and practice
due to the high complexity inherent in water use systems, which, in turn, demands
a coherent and clearly defined terminology. In this chapter, we define most of the
basic vocabularies needed in this book. In doing so, we employed current water
terminology from various sectors unified through their formal definitions from valid
references, including dictionaries.
2.1 Water Use System (WUS)
“Making water available for its many uses and users requires tools and institutions to
transform it from a natural resource to one providing services” (UN-HLPW 2017).
Hence, it is crucial to distinguish between resource and service, but most of the
time the boundary between them is not sharp enough perpetuating flawed decision
making. To overcome this foundational problem, this book only focusses on water
services and starts with a generic service provider, which we call a Water Use System
(WUS) as depicted in Fig. 2.1.
The rectangle in Fig. 2.1 represents the system that is under analysis (WUS), such
as a city, industry, crop land, basin, country or countries. The arrows show the nine
fixed Water Path Types (WPTs) as given in Table 2.1. Here fixed means that all the
flows of any WUS has these nine types and symbols, which do not change throughout
this book and cases. In the examples and the tables and the figures of this book, if
the units of measurement are not important in conveying a concept, they will not be
specified. For example, the units of measurement in Table 2.1 are irrelevant as they
can be length (L), volume per unit of time (L
3 T
−1 ), volume (L
3 ), or the like and
consequently are not specified. Obviously, in any particular situation, all the flows
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license
to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
N. Haie, Transparent Water Management Theory,
Water Resources Development and Management,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6284-6_2
9
Terminology
As will be seen, the theory of this book is vital for water policy, planning and practice
due to the high complexity inherent in water use systems, which, in turn, demands
a coherent and clearly defined terminology. In this chapter, we define most of the
basic vocabularies needed in this book. In doing so, we employed current water
terminology from various sectors unified through their formal definitions from valid
references, including dictionaries.
2.1 Water Use System (WUS)
“Making water available for its many uses and users requires tools and institutions to
transform it from a natural resource to one providing services” (UN-HLPW 2017).
Hence, it is crucial to distinguish between resource and service, but most of the
time the boundary between them is not sharp enough perpetuating flawed decision
making. To overcome this foundational problem, this book only focusses on water
services and starts with a generic service provider, which we call a Water Use System
(WUS) as depicted in Fig. 2.1.
The rectangle in Fig. 2.1 represents the system that is under analysis (WUS), such
as a city, industry, crop land, basin, country or countries. The arrows show the nine
fixed Water Path Types (WPTs) as given in Table 2.1. Here fixed means that all the
flows of any WUS has these nine types and symbols, which do not change throughout
this book and cases. In the examples and the tables and the figures of this book, if
the units of measurement are not important in conveying a concept, they will not be
specified. For example, the units of measurement in Table 2.1 are irrelevant as they
can be length (L), volume per unit of time (L
3 T
−1 ), volume (L
3 ), or the like and
consequently are not specified. Obviously, in any particular situation, all the flows
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license
to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
N. Haie, Transparent Water Management Theory,
Water Resources Development and Management,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6284-6_2
9