Modelling Water Saving In The Upper Iskar Region

Two models for sustainable water management are presented. They have been developed in a participatory context within AquaStress, a FP6-EC integrated project (2005-2009), which aimed to develop integrated, comprehensive and multisectoral approaches for the diagnosis and mitigation of water stress. The case study has been the upper Iskar region in Bulgaria, where a group of local stakeholders and experts defined the major problems related to water scarcity and water sharing. The case study focuses on the two major sectors (industrial and domestic), for which System Dynamics Modelling and Bayesian networks have been applied respectively. The key hypothesis tested is that if the two largest water consumers use water more efficiently, competition would diminish and the available resources would be sufficient to satisfy the current demands, leading to greater social consensus.