Evaluation of Water Security in Jordan using a Multi-Agent Hydroeconomic Model: Climate, Crises, and Stability.

Our work focuses on evaluation of long term water security in Jordan using a multi-agent, hydroeconomic model of the country's water system. Jordan ranks among the most water-scarce countries in the world, a situation exacerbated due to an influx of refugees escaping the civil war in neighboring Syria. The modular, multi-agent model is used to evaluate the evolution of Jordan's water system under a range of scenarios and potential interventions, integrating biophysical modules that simulate subsurface and surface hydrology and infrastructure systems with human modules that represent water allocation and demand behavior. We explicitly account for human agency at multiple levels of decision making, with agents representing riparian, management, supplier, and water user groups. Human agents are implemented as autonomous entities in the model that make decisions in relation to one another and in response to hydrologic and socioeconomic conditions.

The model is run through the end of the 21st century to evaluate potential supply, demand, and institutional interventions over a wide range of plausible climate and socioeconomic scenarios, developed by downscaling RCP and SSP projections to the Jordan national level. Model results paint an alarming outlook on Jordan's water security. Under the most pessimistic conditions considered, over 60 percent of the country's lower-income household population experience critical insecurity by the end of the century, dropping below a water use threshold of 40 liters per capita per day. While climate and socioeconomic changes will place extreme stress on the water system under all conditions evaluated, model results also indicate that a proactive combination of supply, demand, and institutional interventions can substantially reduce water insecurity for the country's household population. In addition to the Jordan work, potential applications to the U.S. Department of Energy funded integrated multi-scale multi-sector modeling program for energy-water-land systems will be discussed.