Risk assessment of urban water network triggered by social behavior due to rising water demand within households

Sadeghfam, S.; Amjadi, S.; Abadi, B.; Moazamnia, M. 2025. Risk assessment of urban water network triggered by social behavior due to rising water demand within households. AQUA - Water Infrastructure, Ecosystems and Society, jws2025283.[doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/aqua.2025.283]

This study assesses the risk of the urban water network (UWN) using social and spatially driven GIS datasets to provide proof for the areas of the UWN that receive the greatest impacts from the residents' behavioral patterns. Little is known about how urban residents’ cognitive systems trigger the risk of not meeting demand (NMD). The study formulates the risk of NMD as the product of hazard and vulnerability using the fuzzy catastrophe scheme. As a triggering event, the hazard refers to the residents' behavioral patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic, and vulnerability points to the technical characteristics of UWN. For visualizing the hazard for NMD within the household-UWN complex, the study benefited from a cross-sectional survey of 356 citizens in the Maragheh township. The low-to-high risk indices were classified into Bands 1–5, respectively. The central part and some parts in the southwest and southeast are located in Band 5, overlapping traditional parts of the city. The path analysis, utilizing socially based and spatially driven GIS datasets within the household-UWN complex, identifies a significant impact of attitude toward COVID-19 and risk. Generally, parts of UWN with the highest risk are located where citizens have the least average attitude toward water-saving behavior.