Network Topology and Digital-Intelligent Empowerment for Three Water Integration in the Upper Yellow River

The integrated governance reform of water resources, water environment, and water ecology (Three Water Integration, TWI) is essential for addressing complex ecological risks in river basins. However, existing studies lack an integrated digital-intelligent platform to support basin-wide assessment. This study develops a framework that integrates a digital-intelligent platform with network analysis to quantify governance evolution and propose county-level strategies. We apply the framework to the Upper Yellow River Basin (2000–2024) using multi-source data. We construct a “Sustainable Water Cube Space” network, identifying four stable indicator clusters: socio-economy, water resources, water environment, and water ecology. We also identify 18 key “bridge” indicators based on network centrality. Network stability tests (Jaccard similarity = 0.76) and multi-temporal topological evolution analysis reveal a governance paradigm shift: the focus transitioned from economy-driven to ecology-economy-coordinated development from 2000 to 2022, We also observe that economic growth has decoupled from environmental degradation, with the correlation between these indices dropping from 0.72 to 0.34. Attribution analysis identifies pollution control (42%) and ecological restoration (35%) as the primary drivers of improvement. Finally, we propose differentiated governance strategies for eight counties based on their local characteristics. This study provides a replicable, data-driven framework for quantifying TWI governance evolution and informing county-differentiated strategies at the watershed scale.