System dynamics for monitoring urban water consumption management: a case study

Resumen

With continued water resource shortages and population growth rate especially in the big cities, it is necessary for managers to aim of providing high quality water for public as well as protecting the water resources. Planners and water managers must focus on obtaining a complete understanding of the available water resources and potential impacts in order to meet current and future water demands. Investment in long term strategy for water problems is a fundamental step to avoid and reduce water crises in the future. Water problems involve different values of social, economic and environmental interests; applying new systems based water management tools could provide the means to consider and assess all the complex issues. It is crucial to obtain suitable tools to deal with multiple and dynamic problems of water and simplify the various aspects related to the water resources management. These tools could facilitate a closer linkage between decision-making process with regard to sustainable planning and long-term water management and also maximise the effectiveness of water managers’ decision processes. Aronson (1998) believed that the character of systems thinking makes it extremely effective on the most difficult types of problems to solve: those involving complex issues, those that depend a great deal dependence on the past or on the actions of others, and those stemming from ineffective coordination among those involved. Water consumption management is one of the most complicated subjects in planning of urban areas. As the complexity of water management increases there is a need to develop a systematic approach to investigate the requirements of water management. System thinking offers the water consumption managers the ability of assessing, predicting and planning for availability and use of water. This method is a suitable tool to deal with multiple and dynamic problems of water and could simplify the various aspects related to the water resources management. Saysel (2007) expressed that the water resources planning and management requires analytic methods to guide decision making on development, use and consumption of water resources. System dynamic provides a flexible structure as to establish a framework for learning water resource systems and water management problems. System dynamics with systemic feedback modelling can monitor water supply-demand flow of urban areas in order to support decision over long term policy. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for monitoring water consumption that highlights possible water saving strategies. The paper presents the process of building a system dynamics model of water consumption management using the VENSIM software. The model provides a formal causal-descriptive framework along with computer simulation for the analysis of dynamic, complex and socio-economic water consumption problems, which includes feedback loops and dynamic relationships over the time. In particular, the computer simulation methodology provides an experimental platform for the water consumption