System’s approach to municipal water use allocation

Abstract

Human activities in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems can cause the depletion of coastal resources. The study aimed to develop a decision support system for the municipality of Palauig, Zambales as the basis for coastal resource management. Water use allocation was done in a systems approach, using Gurobi® - mathematical optimization solver, considering priority goals of Palauig, goal 1 is to maximize mangrove use in minimizing disaster risk, goal 2 is maximizing water suitability and goal 3 is maximizing the total economic value of resources. The municipal water map was divided into 1-ha grids. Optimization run results showed that disaster risk fronting shoreline would be canceled by mangrove allocated on those areas. The area allocation of 331 ha mangrove, 1 ha coral, 1,573 ha seagrass, 50 ha fish cage, 33 ha MPA and 17,942 ha fishing area, the water uses would have economic values of Php 2.9B, Php 20.8M, Php 1.7B, Php 4.1B, Php 323M, and Php 33.9B, respectively. The area allocated for the fish cage did not exceed the allowable area set hence, its environmental impacts would be manageable. Production of 2.3MT would meet Palauig’s consumption requirement for fish.