Internal (blue) water footprint of municipal consumption: a case study for Turkey.

This study aimed to develop a common approach to investigate (blue) water footprint of consumption of municipalities. Analysis framework consists of two distinct phases as: water abstraction profile and water distribution and water use profile. In the proposed approach municipal water footprint (WFmunicipal) comprises three components: domestic water footprint (WFdomestic), industrial/commercial water footprint (WFindustrial/commercial), and public water footprint (WFpublic). The application of the methodology was demonstrated in Turkey. The overall objective was to identify water consumption profile regarding model components and assess spatial and temporal distributions in the country scale. In this scope, each component was determined for 81 cities. After the investigation of spatial differences, an answer to the question of, "whether water use is increasing or decreasing over time" was found. Results investigated that WFmunicipal was 140 L/ca.day in average and reached up to 300 L/ca.day in some cities. WFdomestic was about 100 L/ca.day and cities having lower values mostly located on north-west, south-east of the country. Furthermore, few spots with high values were observed for WFindustrial/commercial (with 10 L/ca.day average), and relatively lower values belonged to the cities in south-eastern region. WFpublic having 30 L/ca.day mean value had extremes in eastern part. Based on water consumption characteristics, cities were grouped using factor analysis and results created four groups of cities. Although eastern and western cities had no trends in water abstraction rate, other regions had decreasing trend in last 20 years. Investigation of (blue) water footprint of consumption of municipalities is believed to assist water managers to identify water use profiles and assess spatial and temporal distributions. This is important because water resources are becoming increasingly stretched to accommodate continued population and economic growth and to restore environmental flows.