Future water demand modeling: A multi-sector review using a streamlined methodological approach

Abstract Future water demand modeling is of crucial importance for stakeholders, particularly in the era of rapidly changing climate and socioeconomic conditions. The modeling results can be applied to develop effective adaptation strategies that ensure equitable and sustainable allocation of water to various economic sectors, including institutional, commercial, industrial (ICI), residential and agricultural. However, a comprehensive review of existing future water demand modeling methods that consider both climatic and socioeconomic factors as well as the major economic sectors is currently lacking. This review article contributes to fill this knowledge gap while introducing a more streamlined and comprehensive methodological approach for conducting literature reviews in the environmental sciences domain. At the core of this method is a new framework designed to support research questions formulation and literature search strategies named STAR (Systems, Trouble/Treatment, Alternative, Response). In addition, it presents a data-requirement-based metric as well as a new nomenclature for classification of surveyed methods and approaches to guide the selection process of future water demand modeling methods. Furthermore, it proposes a hybrid modeling approach made up of three components (computational intelligence, dynamic systems and probabilistic scenarios) in the form of a theoretical workflow for future water demand modeling. The proposed workflow ensures broad applicability, making it adaptable not only to water demand management but also to a wide range of challenges across the environmental sciences.