Using System Dynamics to Simulate the Hsinchu Region Development and Water Resources

Water resource consumption is certainly one of the most complicated and delicate issues in planning and developing an urban area. Supply and demand on a single line is very easy to handle. However, with growing population and expanding city parameters, intertwined water pipes get ever so complicated and subsequently water management becomes an enormous task. Fortunately, with the help of system dynamics analysis, this enormous task can be broken down into easy-to-manage and understand steps not only to water managers but also to the general public. Hence, we adopt System Dynamics to build a water consumption model of Hsinchu region to give different strategies of industry and water management, and to illustrate variations of the water supply versus consumption. Based on the structure of Hsinchu water resource system, we used VENSIM to build a system dynamics model, which enables to build a virtual laboratory to test the manager's strategies and to communicate with the interested groups who are not experts of water management.