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Water scarcity assessments in the past, present and future.
Journal article

Water scarcity assessments in the past, present and future.

  • Liu J School of Environmental Science and Engineering, South University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
  • Yang H Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).
  • Gosling SN School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
  • Kummu M Water and development research group, Aalto University, Finland.
  • Flörke M Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany.
  • Pfister S ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Hanasaki N National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan.
  • Wada Y NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA.
  • Zhang X School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 10083, China.
  • Zheng C School of Environmental Science and Engineering, South University of Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
  • Alcamo J Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany.
  • Oki T Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
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  • 2018-11-01
Published in:
  • Earth's future. - 2017
Freshwater resources
environmental flow requirements
green water
virtual water
water footprint
water quality
English Water scarcity has become a major constraint to socio-economic development and a threat to livelihood in increasing parts of the world. Since the late 1980s, water scarcity research has attracted much political and public attention. We here review a variety of indicators that have been developed to capture different characteristics of water scarcity. Population, water availability and water use are the key elements of these indicators. Most of the progress made in the last few decades has been on the quantification of water availability and use by applying spatially explicit models. However, challenges remain on appropriate incorporation of green water (soil moisture), water quality, environmental flow requirements, globalization and virtual water trade in water scarcity assessment. Meanwhile, inter- and intra- annual variability of water availability and use also calls for assessing the temporal dimension of water scarcity. It requires concerted efforts of hydrologists, economists, social scientists, and environmental scientists to develop integrated approaches to capture the multi-faceted nature of water scarcity.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/99687
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