To quantify the possible change in water resources as a function of external factors such as land use, climate change, regional water management strategies, or trade of virtual water via food, scenarios will be defined.
The variables of the scenarios are both climate factors (precipitation and temperature) as well as socioeconomic factors (population growth, consumption per capita, domestic water management, import of virtual water via food). According to the TEEB classification, a distinction is made between provider services (food, quality and quantity of drinking water and irrigation water), regulating services (carbon storage, erosion protection, nutrient retention) and habitat services (habitats for endangered species) and their relevance for the regional development objectives. Scenarios are defined and analyzed in consultation with the stakeholders, and a scenario catalog is generated, which serves as background information for the development of the real-time DSS.
Finally, the effects of the influencing factors on the ecosystem services are quantified along the defined causal chains for the scenarios using the regional SWAT-MODFLOW model. The energy consumption of the water supply is also modeled as an indicator. This will be relevant as the physical energy consumptions for the provision of virtual water (via transport of imported food to Israel) can be compared to the energy consumption for the provision of desalinated seawater for irrigation farming.