Urban water resources accounting based on industrial interaction perspective: Data preparation, accounting framework,...

Water scarcity has become one of the serious global challenges threatening urban water security. To systematically understand the utilization of water resources in cities, this study established a novel comprehensive accounting framework of urban water resources based on three dimensions: "the entire city, sectoral level, and intersectoral interactions". To make this accounting framework that can be applied to the majority of cities, a method for compiling input-output (IO) tables at the general prefecture-level city scale was proposed to obtain the needed core data. Dongguan, a prefecture-level city in Guangdong Province, China, known for its well-developed manufacturing industries but water scarcity, was chosen as a case study to test the effectiveness of the method. The results indicated the total water use in Dongguan decreased by 7.2% during 2012-2017, which benefited from steady economic growth. Besides, the "agriculture" sector has significantly higher direct water use coefficient than other sectors, while the indirect water use coefficient of the manufacturing sector exceeded the direct water use coefficient in 2017. In addition, there are two major virtual water flow paths among sectors in Dongguan, which are helpful to water conservation. The comprehensive water resources accounting framework proposed in this study for general prefecture-level cities is applicable to water resource management, enabling not only the optimization of water resource allocation in urban areas but also the reduction of environmental pollution and ecological damage. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to further optimize the compilation of IO tables and better support the formulation of specific water-saving measures in the future research by collecting more detailed industry data and import-export data. These results of this study can provide important practical reference information for water resource management in general-scale cities similar to Dongguan in the world.