This project is part of an interdisciplinary research project with the title: "GLOWA-DANUBE - integrative techniques, scenarios and strategies regarding global changes of the water cycle". The overall goal of this project is to develop and validate integration techniques, integrated models, and integrated monitoring procedures for the functional type of a catchment in mountain forelands of the humid latitudes and to implement them in the network-based integrated environmental Decision-Support-System DANUBIA. DANUBIA contains the essential physical and socio-economic processes that are required for realistic modeling of water fluxes in mountain-foreland situations. It will be regionally transferable and thus applicable for a wide range of catchments. The members of GLOWA-Danube cover the disciplines meteorology, hydrology, remote sensing, ground water, water resources managment, glaciology, economy, agricultural economy, tourism, environmental psychology and computer science. For further information on this project and the participating partners, consult the Glowa-Danube Website: www.Glowa-Danube.de. The aim of the economic component of DANUBIA is to model industrial activity and water use, population density and household income on a regionally disaggregated level and to derive rules for the setting of water prices. For this purpose, the regional economic model RIWU (Regional Industrial Water Use) was developed.
The regional economic model RIWU is suitable to analyze decisions of different actors regarding the use of water resources. RIWU is based on the assumption of a representative profitmaximising industrial firm which uses two local inputs, land and water. Industrial production and the local service sector dynamics determine the overall level of economic activity in the district, which in turn determines household income and population density. RIWU is integrated into the DANUBIA system: it provides other components with data concerning household income, population density and industrial water demand and uses data on water demand and supply from other components to set a water price. The model consists of eight model equations with which seven endogenous variables are forecast (value-added in industry, gross domestic product, price of land for construction, population, household income, industrial water demand and industry own-water supply). The exogenous variables are foreign sales and the area of land.
The model equations have been developed drawing on current results in the field of empirical regional-economic research. Data have been collected and the model equations have been estimated on the district level. In the outcome industrial activity depends positively on local exports and negatively on the prices of land and water use. The elasticity of industrial production with regard to the price of water use is markedly lower than with regard to land use. This reflects the fact that there is no shortage of water in the Upper Danube Basin up to now. The analysis of the simulation properties of the model shows satisfactory results. The regional economic model RIWU proved to be an appropriate tool to forecast regional economic development and industrial water use. It turned out that water scarcity and raising water prices have only a small impact on the Upper Danube region’s industrial growth. The reason is that industry will substitute water extraction by increased water recycling in the case of water scarcity or increasing water prices. RIWU has been successfully integrated into the Decision-Support-System DANUBIA and exchanges a multitude of data with the other models of social and natural sciences during the runtime of DANUBIA. In this context of interdisciplinary research and modelling, RIWU can be used for as tool for questions of water resource management and can be transferred to other river basins.
Langmantel, E. (2004), Industrial Growth and Water Demand - An Empirical Analysis for the Upper Danube Catchment, Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft Vol. 24, Nr. 2 (2004), p. 161-176.
Langmantel, E., Wackerbauer, J. (2003), RIWU - A Model of Regional Economic Development and Industrial Water Use in the Catchment Area of the Upper Danube, in: International Journal of River Basin Management, Vol. 1, Nr. 2 (2003), p. 1 – 5.
Wackerbauer, J. (2003), Regulierungsmodelle für die öffentliche Wasserversorgung und ihre Wettbewerbseffekte (Regulation models for the public water supply and their competitive effects), in: ifo Schnelldienst 21/2003, p. 9 – 17.
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