Rockström et al. (2009) introduced the concept of a safe operating space for humanity that will not push the planet out of the ‘Holocene state’. Establishing the limits of this operating space is ongoing for various earth bound systems. Estimates of these limits are plagued by uncertainty. In case of the limits to the world water system, these uncertainties arise out of conflicting models, regional variations, limitation of expansion of water use through financial and institutional capacity, uncertainty about the realization and efficiency of trans-boundary water transfers, and interdependency between the water system and other earth systems. This paper aims at investigating the limits to global freshwater use. To this end, the behavior of a System Dynamic model of the world water balance is explored across a wide variety of uncertainties. Active non-linear testing is used to identify the best case and worst case for water stress and world population. We find counter intuitive results related to the occurrence of maximum water stress, conclude that global limits can be investigated with a spatially aggregated model and are strengthened in our hypotheses that exploratory modeling adds to the understanding of complex and uncertain issues in a way that predictive approaches cannot.

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Date created

• 2012 July 22-2012 July 26

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

ab062956a014e30aaf02b44e9d33088e

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

Scope and Contents

Part of

b90fd81032b7dbf0c9f90f3dc3a33f1c

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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives