Abstract
Long-term sustainability in water supply systems is a major challenge due to water resources depletion, climate change and population growth. This paper presents a scenario-based approach for performance assessment of intervention strategies in water resources and supply systems (WRSS). A system dynamics approach is used for modelling the key WRSS components and their complex interactions with natural and human systems and is combined with a multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainability performance assessment of strategies in each scenario. The scenarios combine population growth rates with groundwater extraction limits against two types of intervention strategies. The methodology was demonstrated on a real-world case study in Iran. Results show scenario-based analysis can provide suitable strategies leading to long-term sustainability of water resources for each scenario externally imposed on the water systems. For scenarios with either no threshold or one threshold of groundwater extraction limit, the only effective strategies for sustainable groundwater preservation are those involving agricultural water demand decrease with an average recovery rate of 130% for groundwater resources while other strategies of agricultural groundwater abstraction (constant/increase rates) fail to sustainably recover groundwater resources. However, all analysed strategies can provide sustainability of water resources with an average recovery rate of 33% for groundwater resources only when scenarios with two threshold limits are in place. The impact of scenarios with population growth rates on groundwater conservation is quite minor with an average recovery rate of 11% compared to scenarios of groundwater extraction limits with an average recovery rate of 79% between no threshold and two threshold limits.
Highlights
While some regions in the world benefit from abundant freshwater supply, recent droughts showed an urgent need for changing public perception of water and its efficiency globally (Ziolkowska &Ziolkowski 2016)
While rapid population growth and economic development have led to higher water demand, climate change has increased the uncertainties of water resources
Management of agricultural water demands as the main consumer of water resources can be used for developing new water policies to reduce the tensions of water resources that have a major impact on domestic water supply (Michelsen & Young 1993)
Summary
While some regions in the world benefit from abundant freshwater supply, recent droughts showed an urgent need for changing public perception of water and its efficiency globally (Ziolkowska &Ziolkowski 2016). Sustainability of groundwater resources is highly dependent on complex feedback loops between human and natural systems in line with policy developments (Jia et al 2019; Lizjen et al 2014). This requires continuous assessment of sustainable groundwater management by deep knowledge of present and projected status of groundwater quantity and quality (Hosseini et al 2019). Phan et al (2018) presented a feedback-driven SD model for simulation of the supply and demand sides of a coastal freshwater system to assess and quantify potential climatic and socio-economic influences on the system vulnerability. Fang et al (2019) developed a SD-based model to analyse water allocation based on rapid urbanisation, excessive exploitation of resources and environmental pollution. Phan et al (2018) presented a feedback-driven SD model for simulation of the supply and demand sides of a coastal freshwater system to assess and quantify potential climatic and socio-economic influences on the system vulnerability. Tianhong et al (2019)
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