Generation of municipal water security indices by a probabilistic approach

Water is turning to be scarce in Latin America and the Caribbean, in the 21st century, caused by an increase in its demand due to population growth, increased food production and higher energy consumption, linked to a temporary climate variation. Governments must establish water security programs by planning the management of water resources, as a paradigm shift. Mexico is not the exception, a country of strong meteorological, hydrographic and social contrasts throughout its territory, which impact in different ways the population strata, similar to other developing countries. In this context, hazard, social vulnerability and risk indexes are proposed and quantified in this paper, through a probabilistic methodology for calculating water security. Hazard is expressed by basic water services shortage, floods, groundwater depletion, and drought indicators. In turn, the vulnerability considers educational level of the population, access to health services, infant mortality rate, illiteracy, housing conditions, unemployment and proportion of indigenous language population. In the development of this study it is shown that both hazard and vulnerability throughout the Mexican territory are very heterogeneous. The proposed probabilistic methodology was implemented in a Geographical Information System obtaining water security indexes for all municipalities in Mexico (2,456 municipalities).