Abstract:
Management and allocation of water resources has turned out to be more challenging than
before due to increase in population. Increase in water demand due to rapid surge in
population has also resulted in water scarcity issues in Pakistan. The Lower Bari Doab Canal
region in Punjab, Pakistan is classified as a semi-arid area due to its climatic conditions. The
expansion of urban developments and rapid population growth has resulted in the shortage
of water supply in the region. The aim of this study was to assess the impacts of future water
demands on the Lower Bari Doab water resources in year 2035. In order to find the best
combination of scenarios that met the future water demands, a scenario-based modeling was
used in conjunction with Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) software. The baseline
scenario was based on the year 2015 and for each scenario, the water resources implications
were compared with that baseline scenario. The Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP)
modeling was used in this research to evaluate the complex water resource system and to
inspect supply and demand management policies related to different sectors in Lower Bari
Doab Canal Area. To address gap between water supply and demand, Nash Bargaining
Solution (interval linear programming) was used for better allocation of water resources.
Results showed that the supply demand gap continues to increase under the current
condition. More than 55.847 BCM of additional water is needed by year 2035 to satisfy the
water demands. The unmet water demand also varies as per proposed scenarios. The high
agriculture scenario shows that the demand for agriculture can increase up to 90.77% by the
year 2035. High population and high industry scenarios show that the unmet demand for
these sites can increase up to 14.28% and 66.66% respectively. A careful control of the
population growth rate is necessary in future to control the growing water demands. In order
to address the supply-demand gap, water allocation under different scenarios was done using
Nash Bargaining Solution. This approach helps in analyzing future water demand along with
better and more efficient addressing of water resources to address the supply and demand
gap.
