Procedure for analyzing the carrying capacity of water supply: Case study in Bauru – SP

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop a procedure for creating indicators of productive limits and efficiency within water supply sectors, in order to verify the demand intensity that a given population places on the availability of water production in the environment. The methodology involved collecting data through a case study in the water supply sectors of Bauru, São Paulo, by gathering various documents, records, consumption data, flow rates, and other relevant information provided by the responsible municipal authority. The relevance of the study is highlighted by the fact that the main urban centers of the country are supported by only a fraction of the available water resources due to geographical conditions. Therefore, the search for methodologies to establish efficiency indicators for the use and availability of water production is extremely important for integrated and continuous management of available resources. The results indicate that the developed model produced consistent outputs both with the observed data and the compiled verification data, thus proving sufficiently adequate to represent the phenomenon of water production in supply sectors. The study was able to compile data and provide indicators that offer a better understanding of the supply conditions of the case study, which could serve as a reference for scheduling and prioritizing investments in the supply system.