Estimating the potential water reuse based on fuzzy reasoning

摘要

Studies worldwide suggest that the risk of water shortage in regions affected by climate change isgrowing. Decision support tools can help governments to identify future water supply problems in orderto plan mitigation measures. Treated wastewater is considered a suitable alternative water resource andit is used for non-potable applications in many dry regions around the world. This work describes adecision support system (DSS) that was developed to identify current water reuse potential and thevariables that determine the reclamation level. The DSS uses fuzzy inference system (FIS) as a tool andmulti-criteria decision making is the conceptual approach behind the DSS. It was observed that waterreuse level seems to be related to environmental factors such as drought, water exploitation index, wateruse, population density and the wastewater treatment rate, among others. A dataset was built to analyzethese features through water reuse potential with a FIS that considered 155 regions and 183 cities.Despite some inexact fit between the classification and simulation data for agricultural and urban waterreuse potential it was found that the FIS was suitable to identify the water reuse trend. Information onthe water reuse potential is important because it issues a warning about future water supply needs basedon climate change scenarios, which helps to support decision making with a view to tackling watershortage.