Evaluation of Unconventional Water Resources Based on Knowledge Granularity

Abstract

Water resources are important natural resources and play a key role in economic development and social life. China is one of the countries with the most serious water shortage in the world. In the next few decades, the contradiction between supply and demand of water resources will always plague China. Increasing the use of unconventional water resources to mitigate the water crisis is necessary way to achieve a sustainable development. There has been no effective standard yet in China to evaluate the exploitation level and potential of unconventional water resources. This study describes the current status of the exploitation and aims at establishing an evaluation system incorporating the three relevant factors, namely, driving, restrictive, and risk factors respectively, and provides a theoretical basis for the management of unconventional water resources in China. In order to mine the relationship between data and evaluation indexes, the rough set theory is adopted to determine the weight and objectively reflect the importance of each evaluation index. On the basis of the evaluation system, relevant data from 2006 to 2017 in Beijing were selected, and the results show that the urgency of unconventional water resources development in Beijing was generally on the rise with a small fluctuation range.