An integrated model for water management in a rapidly urbanizing catchment

Existing water and environmental management models usually separately simulate socio-economic, water infrastructure and natural receiving water systems and thus cannot effectively capture the interactions among economic and population growth, water resource supply and depletion as well as environmental changes, especially in analyzing long-term scenarios of urbanization. In this paper, a system dynamics and water environmental model (SyDWEM) was developed to improve the understanding of the integrated socio-economic and water management system in a rapidly urbanizing catchment. The integrative character of SyDWEM is featured by putting the socio-economic component as an internal sub module of the whole system. It also contains water consumption and pollution load module, water supply module, wastewater treatment module as well as receiving water module. The Shenzhen River catchment was used as a case study to demonstrate usage of the functionality and purpose of the integrated model. The results indicate that SyDWEM has the capacity to predict the socio-economic and environment changes at a catchment scale under proposed socio-economic policies and water infrastructure planning. Therefore, it can help support the integration of decision making in socio-economic development and environment management.

► We develop an integrated model for socio-economic and water management.
► We simulate socio-economic and water quantity/quality variation in an urbanizing area.
► The model can evaluate the effects of socio-economic policies on the water system.
► The model can evaluate the effects of infrastructure planning on the water system.
► The model can help support the integration of decision making in water management.