Integrated water resources system dynamics modeling and indicators for sustainable rural community

The water resources management may face serious challenges under climate change. In order to efficiently utilize water resources and reduce loadings on centralized water supply systems, it is necessary for each water user to reduce their water requirements. Rural community consumes the great portion of water resources in Taiwan due to high irrigation water demands and thus is concerned in this study. The rural community considers having both external domestic water supply and irrigation systems, and installing reuse system and constructed wetland to provide harvested rainwater and reclaimed water. The purpose of this study is to establish an integrated water resources system dynamics model and propose indicators for quantitatively evaluating the water supply system of a rural community. The three indicators are designed to evaluate water saving efficiency, tolerance of drought duration, and influence of insufficient irrigation water on crop yields. The results show that the combination of the constructed wetland and reuse system possesses more eminent stability than the reuse system alone. The integrated water resources system may reduce up to 32 % of domestic water demands and 7.8 % of irrigation water demands from external systems, respectively. At the same time, the domestic system owns higher resilience. In conclusion, the results indicate that the reuse system and constructed wetland can significantly improve the stability and resilience of water supply system. The study on integrated water resources system for rural community desires more researches. Besides, the influence of climate change and water quality of reclaimed water should be further considered.