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Can water stressed regions be characterised when there is sparse data?

JELLE BUMA¹, CAROLINE SULLIVAN², NENO KUKURIC¹ & JASPER GRIFFIOEN¹

1 TNO Built Environment and Geosciences / Geological Survey of the Netherlands, PO Box 80015, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

jelle.buma@tno.nl

2 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Maclean Building, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford OX10 8BB, UK

Abstract In the identification of effective mitigation strategies to combat water stress, indicators for natural hydrological potential, water stress and mitigation measures are important. Ideally, such indicators should meet two conditions: (1) public availability (preferably in digital format), and (2) distin­guishing capacity at the required scale of drainage sub-basins. However, water stress indicators tend to be available, if at all, only for large-scale administra­tive units (country or province), and there is a clear need to consider how water stress can be assessed in unmonitored regions. In this paper, an attempt has been made to define a simple approach for indicator mapping, using a few key indicators based on information from water management practices in eight selected test sites of the EU funded Aquastress project. Within this project, the approach outlined here will be tested and validated.

Key words case based reasoning; indicators; mapping; scale; water stress