Water-Conserving Design：Contributions of Water Budget Analysis to Resilience in Arid and Semi-arid Regions

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1000-0232.2015.03.032

Abstract：Water budget analysis has made important contributions to water-conserving design in arid and semiarid regions of Asia, the Middle East, and North America. It is routinely employed in irrigation design and watershed planning. It developed from an initial emphasis on climate classification in the 1940s to irrigation, forestry, and urban environmental planning in the later decades of the 20th century, culminating in ecological design, climate impact assessment, and disaster resilience in recent years. Water budget analysis methods have expanded from empirical modeling and mass balance measurements at a point in space for site design, to remote sensing technologies for regional analysis of water transport in soil, plant, and atmospheric systems that draw upon advances in soil and weather sensor and controller technologies. Recent water budget analyses have sought to trace water flows at the global scale, as wel as the water footprints of industrial supply chains, and the water alocation and pricing institutions for urban and site scales. Adaptation of these ideas and methods across a range of scales -- from the human body to the building, site, city, region, and globe -- represents an exciting frontier for arid zone design, and a valuable contribution to the field of water-conserving design more broadly. These prospects are ilustratrated in a series of case studies from the garden complexes of Agra and Nagaur in India to a "new aflaj" system in Abu Dhabi.