Sociohydrology modeling for complex urban environments in support of integrated land and water resource management practices

Abstract

This paper argues that a systems' thinking and explicit modeling approach is needed to address noted weaknesses (in terms of practicality and usefulness) in integrated water resource management. A process of coupling complex regional land use, economy, and water system interactions in integrated modeling is demonstrated with proof‐of‐concept applications to two urban cases (Chicago and Stockholm). In this uniquely coupled systems model, urban land use scenarios are considered a complex urban system represented by dynamic systems models of land use, economics, and water with a focus on urban environments that include drivers and system feedbacks with implications focused on urban water systems. The integrated model results reveal that the physical availability of land for economic activities (forecasted via a bottom‐up land use change model) and their locations differ sharply from top‐down sectoral‐based economic forecasts. This shows that both human systems (economic and land use planning) and natural systems (land use limitations and associated water implications) need to be considered in order to accurately account for system(s) impacts. For example, flood zone regulations divert land use to other locations, whereas land cover changes can greatly affect the water infiltration characteristics of land surfaces and thereby alter hydrological outcomes. Our results indicate that modeling social and natural processes using a systems approach can provide a more comprehensive understanding of coupled causal mechanisms, impacts, and feedbacks in applications of integrated water resource management.

Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

“…This has included the fusion of quantitative with non-quantitative data, as well as hydrological with other types of data (e.g. socio-economic, land-use; Pan et al 2018), and seems essential for making further progress (Question 18) (see also Mount et al 2016, Di Baldassarre et al 2019, Hall 2019. There are many datasets from local sociohydrological studies throughout the literature.…”

“…Much of the current research is done at the global scale , but it is likely that the issues will also become relevant at the regional scale, e.g. for the water sustainability of large cities (Pan et al 2018). These interactions can not only be considered from a problem-solving perspective, but also provide an opening for rich questions of discovery science that will feed back to other fields of hydrology, as hydrology continues to expand from an engineering discipline to an Earth system science (Sivapalan 2018).…”

Land Use Change in Coastal Cities during the Rapid Urbanization Period from 1990 to 2016: A Case Study in Ningbo City, China

“…Coupled land use and climate changes usually lead to amplified hydrological responses and aggravated flood risks in these cities [17]. The management of land and water are increasingly being recognized as inextricably linked [14,18]. In this context, understanding the processes of land use change and its spatial patterns in coastal cities is instructive for policy decision-making on optimal land use planning and management.…”

City Branding Evaluation as a Tool for Sustainable Urban Growth: A Framework and Lessons from the Yangtze River Delta Region

“…Firstly, presence and place in the hexagon framework proved difficult to quantify and were therefore excluded according to the defined principles. Secondly, the environment, infrastructure, and economic development were borrowed from other dominant models of Hankinson [27], Merrilees and Miller [32], Zenker and Petersen [18], Wu and Yang [41], Pan and Deal [42], Pan and Deal [43], and Pan and Zhang [44] to improve the representativeness of the sustainable-oriented development. Thirdly, a novel section on governance was proposed to reflect the importance of urban governance in comprehensively supporting all the above-mentioned aspects.…”