Prospective Models for Water Service Demand and Price Analyses

Abstract

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.

Water Price: Environment Sustainability and Resource Cost

“…This provision would allow the creation of a fund that could deal with the future negative effects caused by harmful actions in the past. As [7] pointed out, water prices should be linked to water scarcity, and water scarcity must be linked to water use. Accordingly, if we increase water use over the level of water availability, scarcity appears.…”

“…The usefulness of simulation is measured by the balance between the reality and the simplicity of the model. In [7], it is possible to find a useful explanation about goodness of simulation models. Definition 1.…”

“…Focused on the supply-side approach, there have been cost models for water supply distribution [5], or cost models developed under the system dynamics simulation environment [6]. From the demand-side, we point to the recent Villar and Melgarejo model [7]. However, our proposal is a global model, which addresses water management in a holistic way.…”

Una aproximación a los efectos sociales de la agricultura de regadío

“…En la literatura especializada es posible apreciar la reproducción de este enfoque dicotómico basado en el antagonismo medio ambiente vs. economía. La mayoría de los estudios realizados en países desarrollados están dirigidos a evaluar los efectos macroeconómicos y ambientales de esta actividad, especialmente en torno a temas como la huella hídrica (Daccache et al, 2014; Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, ( 93) Chukalla et al, 2015), los cambios de uso del suelo y las consiguientes alteraciones del medio ambiente y el paisaje (Serra et al, 2008;García-Marín et al, 2020); la evaluación de la demanda de servicios hídricos (Giannakis et al, 2016;del Villar & Melgarejo, 2020) y el análisis de precios (Berbel et al, 2007;Kampas et al, 2012). La producción científica en el ámbito de la agricultura de regadío en países desarrollados no ha atendido en la misma medida el análisis de los efectos sociales generados por esta actividad.…”