County-level Water Demand Distribution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region Under the Context of Regional Synergistic Development

Abstract:

Under the impact of climate change and human activities, many regions over the world are facing increasingly severe water security challenges. As the political center of China, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jingjinji) region is also the most densely populated and economically developed region. The contradiction between regional sustainable development and seriously insufficient water resources carrying capacity has existed and deepened for a long time. In recent years, the regional synergistic development was proposed as a major national strategy for the Jingjinji region, aiming at transferring the non-capital core functions and solving the “big city disease” in Beijing by means of adjusting spatial structures of population and industry, expanding environmental capacities and other measures. These measures will significantly affect the total amount, structure and spatial distribution of the regional water resource demand. In this context, this study firstly uses a method based on water quota to establish a water demand prediction model, taking into account the production (including agricultural, industrial, and service water sectors), domestic (including urban and rural water sectors), and ecological water sectors. Second, lots of yearbooks, bulletins, plans related to the 13^th Five-Year and regional synergistic development, as well as the historical data of water resource consumption are collected and analyzed to predict the numbers (such as population, GDP, and land use) and quotas (such as effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation), and then, the water demand of 13 cities in the Jingjinji region can be predicted. Third, based on the remote sensing images and various statistical data, the city-level results are downscaled to estimate the water demand of 200 counties in the Jingjinji region with the geographic information system. Analysis and discussion are taken on the future total amount, structure and spatial distribution of water resource demand at the county level under different scenarios such as the normal water consumption level, different water-saving levels (such as resulting from the whole society and agricultural water sector), as well as environmental quality improvement. The achievements obtained in this paper will provide technological support for the scientific management and optimal allocation of regional water resources, and the promotion of regional sustainable development.