Designing an Integrated Management Model of Passive Environmental Defense for Drinking Water Supply in Rasht Metropolis

Protecting the drinking water supply chain of metropolises is one of the important issues that all countries should always pay attention to, because any incident in this supply chain can cause irreparable damages. The purpose of this study is to design an integrated management pattern of passive environmental defense in the field of drinking water supply. The current research is in the category of fundamental studies based on the purpose, and used integrated management of passive environmental defense to investigate the integrated management of passive environmental defense of supply sources, treatment plants, transmission lines and drinking water storage tanks in Rasht metropolis. Data collection was done through interviews with experts, and finally, 14 experts were selected among environmental management professors and water experts by snowball sampling method so that the views reach theoretical saturation. MAXQDA 2020 software was used for text analysis, coding (open, central and selective) and categorization and generation of categorical networks. Evaluating the views regarding solutions to reduce and deal with environmental threats in different stages of water supply in Rasht metropolis showed that the solutions can be considered from five aspects of infrastructure, policy making, cultural, technical and human. Finally, according to the data base theory and Strauss and Corbin’s model, the final model of the integrated management of passive environmental defense of drinking water supply in Rasht metropolis including causal conditions, main category, intervening conditions, background factors, strategies and consequences were presented.