Refining Future Water Demand Projections with Sector-Specific Downscaling
Tethys enables the integration of higher-resolution hydrologic models with models accounting for multi-sectoral influences by downscaling coarse region-scale, sectoral water demand projections to high-resolution gridded data.
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Water is crucial for drinking, farming, and energy production. Projecting future water needs is complex because it involves many global factors, like how crop demand in one country affects water use in another. Current models often look at large areas and long time periods, while water availability models focus on shorter time periods and local dynamics. We created Tethys to bridge this gap. Tethys breaks down coarse-scale water demand data into smaller, more detailed pieces, using specific rules for different sectors. This helps researchers better understand and plan for future water needs across the globe.
We created software named Tethys to help project future water needs more accurately for hydrologic models that often require higher-resolution data. Our tool is the first to make it easy to adjust large-scale from the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) projections of water demand data to smaller, more detailed scales often used by hydrologic models. This innovation allows scientists to better understand where and when water is needed. It helps other researchers improve their models of water use and availability.
Tethys is a sophisticated spatiotemporal downscaling model designed to bridge the gap between coarse-scale global water demand projections and the finer-scale hydrological models needed for accurate simulations of water availability. Tethys addresses the challenge of integrating diverse economic sectors' water demands, which are often modeled at broad spatial and temporal scales, by utilizing sector-specific proxies and algorithms to downscale these projections to more precise grid-level data. This capability is crucial for accurately representing the location and timing of water flows for human consumption, particularly as global economic linkages become increasingly complex. Tethys offers a flexible interface that allows researchers to configure proxy rules and specify target output resolutions, making it easier to generate finely gridded water demand data. These data align with coarser-scale inventories or simulations, facilitating use in various scientific and applied research. The model has been generalized to be able to downscale sectoral water demand from ensembles of socioeconomic, climate, and other scenarios to provide a flexible and robust utility for scalable scientific research. Tethys represents a significant advancement in the field of global water resource modeling.