A Hybrid Hydro-Economic Framework to Allocate Water over the Basin Scale Region under the Water Shortage Periods

Abstract

The present study proposed a hydro-economic framework for water allocation within the Zayande-Rud basin located in Iran, including urban, industry, agriculture, and environmental sectors as water users. The developed framework can investigate the environmental, economic, and social impacts of the economic-oriented water allocation as well as distributions using respective indices. The hydrologic simulation results indicated that the water scarcity dedicated to different sectors, mostly affected the environment by a 45% water deficit, while residential plus industry sections had a 31% and 29% water shortage, respectively. The application of the hydro-economic model (HEM) for water allocation under the water shortage scenario led to a 9.6%, 4%, and 6% increase in the irrigated area (47467 ha), farmers’ profit (equal to 9.7 million USD), and the employment rate in comparison with the base conditions, respectively. By utilizing the proposed hydro-economic model, the simulation results revealed that the irrigated area can be increased as much as 14%, a further 6% increase in profits for farmers (about 12.7 million USD), and enhancing the employment rate up to10.6%. Moreover, water consumption in agriculture sector can be reduced by 15% compared with traditional water allocation method. Accordingly, using such an integrated water distribution model in a basin with different kinds of water users could give policy-makers an actual view of integrated water management while conducting such plans requires testing in real conditions to analyze the hidden problems as barriers.

Keywords

• hydro-economy
• positive mathematical programming
• water allocation
• zayande-rud basin
• socio-economic