Climatic Impact Toward Regional Water Allocation and Transfer Strategies from Economic, Social and Environmental Perspectives

Aiming to store water in wet seasons and outflow water in dry seasons, and improve reservoirs’ performance, are of great importance. Given the developmental disparities across regions and uneven precipitation within one year, water transfer could be an efficient solution. Here, we formulated a three-stage decision-making framework to simulate possible hydrological, meteorological, economic, and demographic parameters in future scenarios and proposed a market-based dynamic multi-objective optimization model, which optimized the adjusted water allocation and water transfers strategies among regions. A case study was conducted in the Yiluo river basin to evaluate the optimal proportion of local water use and water transfers to verify the application and its effects. Results indicated that water use stress and environmental stress could be relieved from four simulated future scenarios, which further accelerated region- and basin-scale sustainability. The results also gave valuable insights into optimal water use options and transferred to maximize the economic, social, and environmental benefits and climate mitigation.