Intensive groundwater development is a common circumstance in semiarid and arid areas. Often

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One way to address the practical challenges of the current problems of water services is through demand-side measures. These types of measures impact on demand through price changes or on water use control, considering that the impacts of these measures would be extremely useful in order to implement an adequate policy mix. One of the objectives of this paper is to show the possibilities of water management tools, particularly the use of prospective prices and demand models, in order to anticipate scarcity scenarios. This can best be done using better predictive models. Current computer tools provide a good basis for developing applications to perform prospective analysis on water prices and demand. Through simulation, we can try to optimize financial flows of costs and revenues based on the behavior of certain variables. This aims to find a better combination of price levels for urban water uses, making it possible to adjust the chargeback mechanisms, the level of cost recovery of investments, and the allocation between user types. This paper aims to show the advantages of these tools and illustrates its usefulness with a registered model that allows simulations of potential scenarios resulting from certain management measures.

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Wastewater reuse is an activity that reduces pollution from discharges while increasing the available water resources. However, the high financial costs of this activity affect the viability of projects, either because of low water productivity or because of the presence of a cheaper alternative, such as natural water sources. The existence of environmental or social benefits makes reuse a positive option for society for its environmental and social benefits. This leaves the public sector to decide whether the benefit obtained justifies its participation in the development of reuse programs, for which it is necessary to use a tool such as cost-benefit analysis, which combines diverse costs and benefits. This article studies the potential for water reuse in Spain and the importance of informed decision-making, based on information regarding water stress, wastewater reuse, and the case study of the Canal de Isabel II (Madrid). The results confirm the potential of wastewater reuse; agriculture has a water productivity below EUR 1 per cubic meter and industry and services need their own sources of water, but financial constraints prevent the greater use of reclaimed water in all economic sectors and public intervention is necessary to obtain the optimum scenario for society. The case study from Madrid that we have analyzed in this paper shows the importance of considering all factors, since the results of prioritizing the financial criterion would have been detrimental to society, in the form of EUR 200 million in environmental damage, while EUR 740 million of non-financial benefits would make wastewater reuse an advantageous alternative for society, thus justifying the public investment.