Urban water security strategies commonly pivot around supply-side initiatives to mitigate scarcity, forecasted population growth, or anticipated climate change; yet, scholars have begun to expand urban water security scholarship by including alternative frameworks that incorporate equity into the analysis. Our study seeks to contribute to this equity turn by opening the investigative aperture on urban water security research in several aspects. We address the question of water security for whom, and turn our attention to the urban resident and household. We shift empirical focus to smaller urban centers in the Global South, and we develop a new assessment tool for water insecurity, the Household Water Insecurity Index (HWISI), to assess differences across the urban waterscape. We conducted this research in Forquilha (Ceará, Brazil), which represents an overlooked class of small urban centers common across Brazil’s semiarid region. We draw on qualitative and quantitative data to describe household water insecurity using the HWISI. The prevalence of household water insecurity is variable, with a quarter of the population experiencing moderate to severe household water insecurity. In addition, analysis of the factors within the HWISI demonstrated how specific water insecurity domains push households across water insecurity thresholds.

中文翻译：

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来自边缘的城市家庭用水不安全：巴西东北部的观点

城市水安全战略通常以供应方举措为中心，以缓解短缺、预测的人口增长或预期的气候变化；然而，学者们已经开始通过将公平纳入分析的替代框架来扩大城市水安全研究。我们的研究旨在通过在几个方面打开城市水安全研究的调查范围，为这种公平转变做出贡献。我们为谁解决水安全问题，将注意力转向城市居民和家庭。我们将实证重点转移到全球南部较小的城市中心，我们开发了一种新的水资源不安全评估工具，即家庭用水不安全指数 (HWISI)，以评估整个城市水景的差异。我们在 Forquilha（巴西塞阿拉州）进行了这项研究，它代表了巴西半干旱地区常见的一类被忽视的小型城市中心。我们利用定性和定量数据来描述使用 HWISI 的家庭用水不安全状况。家庭用水不安全的发生率各不相同，四分之一的人口经历中度至重度家庭用水不安全。此外，对 HWISI 内的因素的分析表明，特定的水不安全领域如何推动家庭跨越水不安全阈值。