A scenario approach to demand forecasting

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Westcott

The Environment Agency's 2001 national water resources strategy, Water resources for the future, provides a secure framework for the management of water that protects the long-term future of the water environment while encouraging sustainable development. Underpinning the strategy are a suite of scenario based forecasts developed to explore the impact of key drivers of demand within different sectors of water use across England and Wales. This paper explains the approach used to produce these forecasts, summarises how the individual components of demand were considered and highlights opportunities for future application and development of this approach. Using the premise that total water demand can mask conflicting trends between sectors, it is essential to consider each sector and its micro-components independently to understand the specific drivers of demand and consequently determine how these might best be managed. Four scenarios reflecting different possible futures of socio-economic and governmental structure were created to test “how”, “why” and “where” these water demands may change by 2025. Such an approach provides an opportunity to test the implications of macro drivers of demand, such as, economic growth and regulatory reform, on the micro-components of water use, linking disparate sectors to a common set of assumptions about the future.

2017 ◽  
Vol 113 (7/8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abiodun A. Ogundeji ◽  
Henry Jordaan

Climate change and its impact on already scarce water resources are of global importance, but even more so for water scarce countries. Apart from the effect of climate change on water supply, the chill unit requirement of deciduous fruit crops is also expected to be affected. Although research on crop water use has been undertaken, researchers have not taken the future climate into consideration. They also have focused on increasing temperatures but failed to relate temperature to chill unit accumulation, especially in South Africa. With a view of helping farmers to adapt to climate change, in this study we provide information that will assist farmers in their decision-making process for adaptation and in the selection of appropriate cultivars of deciduous fruits. Crop water use and chill unit requirements are modelled for the present and future climate. Results show that, irrespective of the irrigation system employed, climate change has led to increases in crop water use. Water use with the drip irrigation system was lower than with sprinkler irrigation as a result of efficiency differences in the irrigation technologies. It was also confirmed that the accumulated chill units will decrease in the future as a consequence of climate change. In order to remain in production, farmers need to adapt to climate change stress by putting in place water resources and crop management plans. Thus, producers must be furnished with a variety of adaptation or management strategies to overcome the impact of climate change.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 2877-2898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Müller Schmied ◽  
Linda Adam ◽  
Stephanie Eisner ◽  
Gabriel Fink ◽  
Martina Flörke ◽  
...  

Abstract. When assessing global water resources with hydrological models, it is essential to know about methodological uncertainties. The values of simulated water balance components may vary due to different spatial and temporal aggregations, reference periods, and applied climate forcings, as well as due to the consideration of human water use, or the lack thereof. We analyzed these variations over the period 1901–2010 by forcing the global hydrological model WaterGAP 2.2 (ISIMIP2a) with five state-of-the-art climate data sets, including a homogenized version of the concatenated WFD/WFDEI data set. Absolute values and temporal variations of global water balance components are strongly affected by the uncertainty in the climate forcing, and no temporal trends of the global water balance components are detected for the four homogeneous climate forcings considered (except for human water abstractions). The calibration of WaterGAP against observed long-term average river discharge Q significantly reduces the impact of climate forcing uncertainty on estimated Q and renewable water resources. For the homogeneous forcings, Q of the calibrated and non-calibrated regions of the globe varies by 1.6 and 18.5 %, respectively, for 1971–2000. On the continental scale, most differences for long-term average precipitation P and Q estimates occur in Africa and, due to snow undercatch of rain gauges, also in the data-rich continents Europe and North America. Variations of Q at the grid-cell scale are large, except in a few grid cells upstream and downstream of calibration stations, with an average variation of 37 and 74 % among the four homogeneous forcings in calibrated and non-calibrated regions, respectively. Considering only the forcings GSWP3 and WFDEI_hom, i.e., excluding the forcing without undercatch correction (PGFv2.1) and the one with a much lower shortwave downward radiation SWD than the others (WFD), Q variations are reduced to 16 and 31 % in calibrated and non-calibrated regions, respectively. These simulation results support the need for extended Q measurements and data sharing for better constraining global water balance assessments. Over the 20th century, the human footprint on natural water resources has become larger. For 11–18% of the global land area, the change of Q between 1941–1970 and 1971–2000 was driven more strongly by change of human water use including dam construction than by change in precipitation, while this was true for only 9–13 % of the land area from 1911–1940 to 1941–1970.


Author(s):  
Abdelmajid Nayif Alawneh

    The research aims to study the impact of unemployment on the social conditions in the Palestinian society from the point of view of the unemployed youth, especially in the current time period (2019), the researcher used the descriptive analytical method, and the research community consists of young people in the governorate of Ramallah. The researcher used the questionnaire tool, and the data were analyzed by the analysis program (SPSS). It was found that the majority of youth are unemployed, they are middle age, single and large families, urban residents, people with specialties and low income. As for the results of the research, there was an increase in the impact of the forms of unemployment on the social conditions of the individual, family and society and their outlook towards the future, came the highest degree on the social conditions of the individual (6. 90%) and then the social conditions of the family (3. 83%), Followed by the societal conditions to reach the value (78%), came the lowest values ​​for the outlook for the future, which amounted to (67%). Some of the features of the impact of unemployment, including the tension, anxiety and frustration of the young group. As for the nature of the relationship between the variables of the study, there was a statistically significant relationship between the combined unemployment and the low income, between the apparent, persuasive and compulsory unemployment, and the individual, family and societal situations and the outlook for them. At the end of the research a number of recommendations were made, most notably the need to balance the types of education and activate the social and cultural role of the family.  


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ponnambalam Rameshwaran ◽  
Ali Rudd ◽  
Vicky Bell ◽  
Matt Brown ◽  
Helen Davies ◽  
...  

<p>Despite Britain’s often-rainy maritime climate, anthropogenic water demands have a significant impact on river flows, particularly during dry summers. In future years, projected population growth and climate change are likely to increase the demand for water and lead to greater pressures on available freshwater resources.</p><p>Across England, abstraction (from groundwater, surface water or tidal sources) and discharge data along with ‘Hands off Flow’ conditions are available for thousands of individual locations; each with a licence for use, an amount, an indication of when abstraction can take place, and the actual amount of water abstracted (generally less than the licence amount). Here we demonstrate how these data can be used in combination to incorporate anthropogenic artificial influences into a grid-based hydrological model. Model simulations of both high and low river flows are generally improved when abstractions and discharges are included, though for some catchments model performance decreases. The new approach provides a methodological baseline for further work investigating the impact of anthropogenic water use and projected climate change on future river flows.</p>


Author(s):  
Peter Watt ◽  
George Boak ◽  
Marija Krlic ◽  
Dawn Heather Wilkinson ◽  
Jeff Gold

This reflective case-history presents the findings of a 12-week pilot study of a collaborative organizational change project which oversaw the implementation of predictive policing technology (PPT) into a territorial police force in the North of England. Based on the first year of a two-year initiative, the reflections consider the impact on the future of the project and their potential future application and cultural embeddedness, beyond the organizational and time-bound specifics of this case.


2019 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 01003
Author(s):  
Hongjie Gao ◽  
Peng Yuan ◽  
Ruixia Liu ◽  
Lu Han ◽  
Yonghui Song

In this study, the assessment of nationwide urban water environment status was conducted based upon a method of integrating both 70% of objective water quality and 30% of standard compliance percent compared with national standard limit of GB3838-2002 for Class III. The impact factors on urban water environment status were discussed. The results showed that the status of urban water environment could be graded into 5 types in China. The population density, water resources, urbanized areas and so on were key impact factors on water environment. The study found that population density and urban built-up area had significantly negative effect on urban water environment status, and there was positive relationship between per capita water resources and urban water environment status. The results would provide the guidance for effective governance and management of urban water environment at national level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 679-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Alamanos ◽  
Stamatis Sfyris ◽  
Chrysostomos Fafoutis ◽  
Nikitas Mylopoulos

Abstract The relationship between water abstraction and water availability has turned into a major stress factor in the urban exploitation of water resources. The situation is expected to be sharpened in the future due to the intensity of extreme meteorological phenomena, and socio-economic changes affecting water demand. In the city of Volos, Greece, the number of water counters has been tripled during the last four decades. This study attempts to simulate the city's network, supply system and water demand through a forecasting model. The forecast was examined under several situations, based on climate change and socio-economic observations of the city, using meteorological, water pricing, users' income, level of education, family members, floor and residence size variables. The most interesting outputs are: (a) the impact of each variable in the water consumption and (b) water balance under four management scenarios, indicating the future water management conditions of the broader area, including demand and supply management. The results proved that rational water management can lead to remarkable water conservation. The simulation of real scenarios and future situations in the city's water demand and balance, is the innovative element of the study, making it capable of supporting the local water utility.


Author(s):  
Vian Ahmed ◽  
Ahmad Saad ◽  
Hasan Saleh ◽  
Sara Saboor ◽  
Nikita Kasianov ◽  
...  

Climate change has become the greatest threat to the survival of world and its ecosystem. With the irreversible impact on the ecosystem, problems like rise in sea level, food-insecurity, natural resources scarcity, seasonal disorders have increased over the past few years. Among these problems, the issue of water scarcity due to the lack of water resources and global warming has plagued several nations. Owing to the rising concerns over water scarcity United Nations (UN) has acknowledged water as a primary resource to the development of societies under the ‘Water Goal’ of the sustainable development goals. As the changing climate and intermittent availability of water resources pose major challenges to forecast demand, especially in countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which has one of the highest per capita residential water consumption rates in the world. Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose an accurate water demand forecasting technique that incorporates all significant factors to predict the future water demands of the UAE. The forecasting model used is the Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), with the factors considered are mean temperature, mean rainfall, relative humidity, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Consumer Price Index (CPI) and population growth. The LSTM model predicts the water demand forecasting in the UAE showing that the future demand will decrease from 1821 million m3 in 2018 to 1809.9 million m3 in 2027.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 2516
Author(s):  
Yoonji Kim ◽  
Jieun Yu ◽  
Kyungil Lee ◽  
Hye In Chung ◽  
Hyun Chan Sung ◽  
...  

Highly concentrated precipitation during the rainy season poses challenges to the South Korean water resources management in efficiently storing and redistributing water resources. Under the new climate regime, water resources management is likely to become more challenging with regards to water-related disaster risk and deterioration of water quality. To alleviate such issues by adjusting management plans, this study examined the impact of climate change on the streamflow in the Bocheongcheon basin of the Geumgang river. A globally accepted hydrologic model, the HEC-HMS model, was chosen for the simulation. By the calibration and the validation processes, the model performance was evaluated to range between “satisfactory” and “very good”. The calibrated model was then used to simulate the future streamflow over six decades from 2041 to 2100 under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The results indicated significant increase in the future streamflow of the study site in all months and seasons over the simulation period. Intensification of seasonal differences and fluctuations was projected under RCP 8.5, implying a challenge for water resources managers to secure stable sources of clean water and to prevent water-related disasters. The analysis of the simulation results was applied to suggest possible local adaptive water resources management policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Eladio Pascual Pedreño ◽  
Vera Gelashvili ◽  
Laura Pascual Nebreda

Purpose: In recent years Bitcoin has revolutionized the financial world. Its birth was made possible thanks to an innovative combination of certain pre-existing technology in computer networks and cryptography, which led to the existence of a transparent, reliable and immutable record of transactions, a large shared ledger: Blockchain. Several studies analyse the application or future application of Blockchain in different industries. The application of Blockchain in accounting is one of the most debated, since it is a shared accounting record and it is anticipated that its application could change the mission of accountants or even auditors. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to analyze the existing literature on the importance of Blockchain and its possible impact on accounting.Design/methodology/approach: The review of the literature on blockchain and its importance was carried out. Also we have analyzed the triple entry and the so-called accounting ledger, trying to clarify some existing terminological confusion, and we have faced what could be the future of this technology.Findings: The review of the literature implies that Blockchain, after technical improvement and development, will involve an important transformation of the traditional accounting system, with the consequent modification of the work of accountants and auditors.Originality/value: One of the main contributions of this study is its importance for academic literature, being one of the first to analyze the impact of Blockchain in traditional accounting.


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