Preparing appropriate water policies for sd analysis: a broad-brush review on water conservation practices

Water scarcity is one of the most serious modern-day problems with a continuously growing list of affected regions. In response, both international organizations and local governments have officially acknowledged this problem and have acted accordingly either by funding related research programs (the scientific community has been studying water scarcity for the last few decades) or by directly taking water demand management measures or by appropriate subsidies. As a result, there are nowadays examples of good practices/techniques that achieve considerable reduction of water demand. The scientific community, apart from suggesting new ideas, provides also feedbacks on these practices/techniques through scientific publications (e.g Zhang et al., 2009; March et al. 2004; Brewer et al. 2001; Surendran and Wheatley, 1998), which are usually thorough assessments of case studies based on some specific strategy, applied at a specific scale and serving a single sector. These reviews are valuable sources for further specialized studies and can serve as guidelines for the implementation of similar technical applications. However, the objective of these reviews is not to provide a broad-perspective picture of the available options suitable for each part of the urban water cycle. In this study, it is attempted to give a rough idea of this “broad picture” by providing an index of the representative best practices. To compile this index, first, the successful applications of water management practices/techniques found in literature were classified using three category types: the sector, the application scale and the employed water reduction strategy. Then, the basic characteristics of the representative best practices were assembled and presented in a compact and organized manner. These indicated best water management practices could be used to appropriately formulate representative water policies resulting from a system dynamics (SD) analysis that will take into account various socio-economic parameters. This will hopefully facilitate a quick uptake of the most promising options for each type of application.