Abstract
The deficiency of water resources is limiting directly and severely the social-economic development and ecological environment protection in many regions, and has been exacerbated by rapid industrial growth and national and state agriculture production objectives. Recent national, provincial and local water reform efforts are also focusing on economic efficiency in water allocation. Mathematical modeling in advance is the requirement for scientific decision-making. Water allocation may have different objectives and bases, but in market economy and on the condition of national investment, we should mainly pursue the maximization of economic objectives, except the basic water guarantee for living, ecology and assuring basic production water use. The amount of allocated water is a multi-dimensional variable and can be optimized in many contexts due to differences in the definition of industrial structure, the technical level of production among different areas and the marginal revenues of water resources. Therefore, the problem of water allocation comes down to solving problems of spatial optimization. This paper presents an equating marginal revenue theory for spatial allocation of water resources: when the marginal revenues of water in all area have the same value, the economic benefit from water for all the intake areas reaches its maximum. When the local available water resources and the marginal revenue of water for all sub-areas are given, for different total water supply from outside, we may calculate the optimized dynamic allocation scheme, the sequence of water allocation starting and the economic benefit from the water allocation for different sub-areas, as well as the integrated maximum economic benefit from water utilization. The example of the six southern districts in Hebei province of China illustrates the feasibility of the theory and models.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Yanchun G., 1998: Concordant analysis on supply and demand of regional water resources and its simulative forecasting, pp. 79–81, doctoral thesis in Institute of Geographic Science and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Yefang J., 2000: Theory and application of management decision support system with integrated water resources programming, pp. 179, doctoral thesis in Institute of Geographic Science and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Changming L., 1992: The united utilization of water resources in the plain of down stream of Yellow River. In: Xu Yuexian, Liu Changming and Sha Hewei (eds), Study on validity of agricultural water, pp. 1–8. Science Press, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Molden D. and Sakthivadivel A., 1999: Water accounting to assess use and productivity of water. Water Resources Developments 15(1&2): 55–71.
Songdi Q., 1990: Operational research, Tsinghua University Press, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Roger O., Hurst C. and Harshadeep N., 1993: Water resources planning in a strategic context: linking the water sector to the national economy. Water Resources Research 29(7): 1895–1906.
Samuelson P. and Nordhaus W., 1992: Economics (14th Eds). McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York.
Slobadan P. and Hussan F., 1999: A new modeling approach for water resources policy analysis. Water Resources Research 35(1): 295–204.
Jinfeng W., 1993: Modeling methods of regional economic analysis. Science Press, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Zhiyong W., Jinfeng W., Jingjie Y. and Changming L., 2000: Analysis on marginal revenues of water in plain area of Hebei province. ACTA Geographica Sinica 55(3): 318–328 (in Chinese).
Wolf A., 1999: Criteria for equitable allocations: the heart of international water conflict. Natural Resources Forum 23: 3–30.
Qianqing X., 1999: On some preconditioned problems of south-north water transfer, Scientific Guidance 5: 28–30 (in Chinese).
Yangtzi River Planning Office, 1987:Yellow River water allocation and the central line water allocation scheme of the South-North Water Transfer Project (unpublished official report, in Chinese). http://www.nsbd.mwr.gov.cn/, the official website of the South-to-North Water Transfer Bureau of China (in Chinese).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jinfeng, W., Jilei, W., Zhiyong, W. et al. An optimized spatial-temporal-sectoral allocation model for water resources. GeoJournal 59, 227–236 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000026692.38257.db
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000026692.38257.db