The Minab plain water-related spatial planning; a system dynamics approach

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Geography, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction:
Lack of fresh water resources to meet water demand has been being looked on as a main challenge of dryland countries in the world. Iran is also suffering from the issue in particular at its sothern regions connecting to the sea. One of the main option on the table to tackle the problem is water demand management has been bolded in Iran as water-related spatial planning scheme. As a result, in term of the water supply, the Minab plain is one of the most important region of the Hormozgan province in Iran and various economic sectors of the plain have been facing with many problems due to the lack of access to water resources. It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand, economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible depletion of groundwater, and negative impacts on the environment. In this regard, one of the most important policy option picked up to reduce these problems is the water-related spatial planning. Such approach focuses on spatial relationships and has been considered as an effective way to integrate economic, social and environmental programs into spatial development (Davies and Simonovic, 2011); In that piece, each region spatial organization crystallizes the flow and pattern of communication between different sectors in the region. But the traditional spatial planning approach, in terms of analysis, has been confining to tools such as GIS suffering from being mostly static and nonlinear.
Material and methods:
The main idea of the paper is that in water-related spatial planning studies, in addition to the traditional view, it is necessary to pay more attention to the system thinking so that the pattern of communication between different economic, social and environmental sectors could be related to water resources in dynamically and nonlinearly manner over time (Davies and Simonovic, 2011). Thus, in the present study, the given mechanism governing the important parts interacting with the water resources of the Minab plain as the spatial organization has been mapped through system dynamics principles, drawing a system mechanism. System dynamics is efficient knowledge to map and analysis following interactions among spatial organization attributes (Sterman, 2000).
Results and discussion:
Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) consisting of two kinds of Reinforcing and Balancing loops are being considered as the base of realizing structure of a system. In fact, the paper initiates to consider the spatial organization as a system to draw efficient policy options and discover complex interactions through it. That’s referred to the main principle of SD implying on structure of a system as a main reason responsible for its behavior. As result if we are going to analysis a spatial organization, considering it as a system, we need first to realize just its structure. To discover the structure, CLDs tool has been being introduced in SD (Richmond, 1993).
Conclusion:
Finally, apart from conventional policies around water supply, two policies based on water demand management approach have been extracted and discussed based on the performance of the given mechanism to maintain the spatial organization equilibrium of the Minab plain.

Keywords

References

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Environmental Sciences
Volume 17, Issue 4
January 2020
Pages 231-248

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