Assessing Industrial Impact on Water Sustainability in El Bajío, Guanajuato State, Mexico

Abstract

Five municipalities in El Bajío present the highest industrial investments: Celaya, Irapuato, León, Salamanca, and Silao. Public and private investments, further to the support received from the government, have been decisive to industrialize the zone. The official discourse to encourage these activities has emphasized the economic and social benefits for inhabitants, the decrease in the use of water volumes, and the consequent improvement of water sources in each region. The main objective of the present work is to present a global industrial impact index to evaluate the industrial impact on water management by analyzing the evolution of some parameters regarding the official data available, in order to determine whether the industry has a positive outcome on the environmental, social, economic and hydrological aspects. For this study, we use Fuzzy Logic (FL) to complete a previous study, which was conducted using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A combination of both approaches is used to define the global impact of industrialization, and the results obtained show that the benefits claimed by governmental policies are not being achieved. The use of this proposed index may guide the decision-making processes to encourage water sustainability.

Measuring the Operational Efficiency and the Water Resources Management Efficiency for Industrial Parks: Empirical Study of Industrial Parks in Taiwan

“…The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Logic (FL) were implemented for accessing the industrial impact on water sustainability using official statistics from El Bajío, Guanajuato State, Mexico [38]. Applying the [38] model to analyze the efficiency of water management in industrial parks requires a large amount of data, but whether these data can be obtained outside of Mexico is a test of practical application. In China, state-level high-tech enterprises will not only reduce the pollution intensity of the local area, but also the pollution intensity of the surrounding area [39].…”