article · Sustainable Production and Consumption
Rapid population growth and urbanisation place severe pressure on scarce natural water resources in arid areas. To tackle this, a water resource management decision support system was developed for Qatar using system dynamics modelling. The system simulates national water supply and demand behaviour from 2021 to 2070 across nine policy scenarios that account for shifting socioeconomic, environmental, and physical factors. The findings demonstrate that continuing with current business-as-usual practices will balance water supply and demand for only 32 years. Conversely, an optimal scenario combining a 10 percent increase in supply with a 10 percent reduction in consumption could maintain water sustainability for up to 50 years. The study also identifies groundwater conservation strategies, recommending that abstractions remain within safe yield limits to protect non-renewable reserves as a strategic national buffer.
Water scarcity poses an existential threat to development in arid nations. This research provides long-term clarity on how quickly water resources could be depleted under current practices. By offering tested scenarios that balance supply growth and demand reduction, it gives planners concrete evidence to protect vital groundwater reserves and avoid severe shortages over the next five decades.
The work has delivered a national-scale decision support tool that is applied and tested through simulation. Potential end users include government water authorities, environmental ministries, and infrastructure planners in Qatar, across the Gulf Cooperation Council, and in other arid areas. The model can be adopted as a planning software system to guide capital investments in water production, evaluate regulatory conservation measures, and manage strategic groundwater reserves.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Rapid global population growth and extensive urbanization threaten water sustainability, hindering sustainable development. This issue is particularly acute in arid regions such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), where the scarce natural water resources are overexploited. Effective water resource management (WRM) is pivotal in overcoming this challenge. This holistic study presents an innovative approach to address water sustainability at a national scale by developing a WRM decision support system (DSS) leveraging system dynamics modeling (SDM). Employing a unique scenario design framework developed in this study, the DSS simulates Qatar's water resource system behavior for 2021 to 2070 according to nine clustered policy scenarios presenting different degrees of sustainability designed accounting for changes in physical, environmental, and socioeconomic patterns. Our results reveal that the “business-as-usual” (BAU) WRM policy can balance water supply and demand for only 32 years. According to the best policy scenario, the sustainability of the water supply could be ensured for up to 50 years by increasing the water supply by 10 % and reducing consumption by 10 %. Additionally, to aid policymakers in fostering water resource sustainability, groundwater conservation strategies are proposed using the unique scenario design framework by limiting the yield to the safe abstraction level and emphasizing the significance of preserving non-renewable groundwater resources as a “backstop” resource for the country. While marking the first holistic research study in Qatar by utilizing the SDM approach to tackle national-scale WRM challenges, the established WRM DSS model is equally applicable to other GCC countries and similar arid regions.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1016/j.spc.2024.03.024
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
