Presentation of the Integrated and Comprehensive Framework in Assessment of Water Demand Management Policies

In recent years due to water resources scarcity and increase in water extraction costs, more attention has been given to water consumption; specifically, urban water consumption as a more sensitive and high priority demand with high costs of supplying. Accordingly the water and wastewater authorities are directed to modern water management methods including water demand management policies and water conservation. These practices and policies not only have widespread positive and negative effects in different aspects, but also by affecting the different components of the system, can make more severe and immense effects. Amongst the most important aspects related to such policies are the social aspect and the main stakeholders of the urban water management, i.e. households. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to address these different aspects by reviewing the requirements and obligations of the integrated framework in assessment of water demand management policies. To this end, firstly the importance and necessity of assessing the water demand management policies has been discussed. Then, different approaches for integrated environmental assessment and management have been introduced by demonstrating the main implications. Also, some illustrative examples are presented. Finally, the agent-based model is introduces as the integrated approach for investigating the micro-level social interaction and assessment of macro-level aggregated impacts.