Modeling Water Supply and Demand for Effective Water Management Allocation in the Jordan Valley

Abstract-Water in Jordan is scarce, yet key to its economic development. A fast growing population and expanding agricultural sector create demands for new water resources. We present a Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model for the Jordan Valley (JV) to evaluate alternative water supply options. WEAP accommodates the extensive primary and secondary spatial data sets behind our empirical analysis and allows the simulation of various water supplys and demand scenarios. This paper reports on the implementation and calibration of the WEAP model against dam operating rules, showing that it is possible to reproduce historical dam volumes accurately enough by analysis. The paper then describes five alternative water supply scenarios for the JV: business-as-usual, increasing treated wastewater in irrigation, climate change, and two combined scenarios—climate change with increasing reuse, and altered patterns of agriculture to calculate the impact on the demand-supply gap by the year 2050.