Assessing Impact of Economic Development on Water Demand and Estimation of Water Value in the Domestic Sector in the United States at Grid Scale
Abstract
Water scarcity is a critical global issue. Nowadays many countries are finding that supply-side solutions alone are not enough to overcome to meet ever increasing demand. Therefore, other solutions such as demand management are being addressed to overcome insufficient available water. Valuation of water is essential for water planner and manager for allocation water, as such estimation enables them to find costs of water scarcity. This study focuses on the demand side of water quantity assessment in the domestic sector over half degree grids. The economic benefit of domestic water use has been estimated along with the amount of domestic water demand distributed over the grids by combining two datasets: 1) the USGS county-scale water withdrawal and 2) the grid-scale gross domestic product (GDP). Based on historical data trend (with increasing economic development, domestic water use is also growing to saturation point) sigmoid function applied for projecting domestic water demand and Willmott index of the agreement is used for evaluating goodness fit of sigmoid function. By building up economic demand function, the economic benefit of water use is calculated based on willingness to pay. It has been applied to the entire United States from 1980 to 2010. Domestic water withdrawal starts from around 22 km3 in 1980 to increase about 39 km3 in 2010 as a maximum amount. In per capita domestic water demand, it started at approximately 100 m3/cap in 1980 to increase to around 137 m3/cap in 1990, and it decreased to about 125 m3/cap in 2010. Demand increases along with economic development, until reach saturation point, after reaching saturation point it starts to decline. Our results show that the sigmoid curve is fitted well (average Willmott index is 0.67). Water value which is measured by economic surplus is also as same as demand trend. It started from around 9894 USD/cap in 1980 to increase around 10114 USD/cap in 1990, and it decreases to about 10053 USD/cap in 2005 and decreases to around 10365 USD/cap in 2010. However, in total value, because it is weighted to population, it shows an increasing trend from 1980 to 2010. The economic benefit of domestic water use in the United States from 1980 to 2010 does not differ much. It can refer to a stabilized domestic water allocation policy in the United States.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H51S1581K
- Keywords:
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- 1812 Drought;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1821 Floods;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1876 Water budgets;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY