Evaluation, Obstacle Diagnosis, and Trend Prediction of Water Resources Conservation and Intensive Utilization Capacity

Water resource conservation and intensive utilization is an important pathway for promoting sustainable regional water resource management and high-quality development. Against the backdrop of increasing constraints on water resources, existing studies have paid insufficient attention to the multidimensional comprehensive assessment of water resource conservation and intensive utilization capacity and its underlying evolutionary mechanisms. Therefore, Heilongjiang Province was selected as the study area, and an evaluation system comprising 15 indicators was established. The game-theoretic combination weighting method, TOPSIS model, obstacle degree model, and GM(1,1) grey forecasting model were employed to comprehensively evaluate, diagnose obstacle factors, and predict the trend of water resource conservation and intensive utilization capacity in Heilongjiang Province from 2004 to 2023. The results showed that the overall capacity exhibited a fluctuating upward trend, with the comprehensive evaluation value increasing from 0.44 to 0.62. The industrial water reuse rate, effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water, comprehensive water consumption rate, per capita water consumption, and ecological water use rate were the indicators with relatively high obstacle contributions. The obstacle factors exhibited distinct stage-specific characteristics: the constraining effects of efficiency-related indicators gradually weakened, whereas those of the comprehensive water consumption rate and per capita water consumption generally intensified, indicating that the factors constraining water resource conservation and intensive utilization in Heilongjiang Province underwent distinct stage-specific changes. The prediction results indicated that the capacity for water resource conservation and intensive utilization in Heilongjiang Province would continue to increase steadily in the future. However, balancing ecological water use requirements with growing water demand remains an important factor affecting sustainable water resource utilization. The evaluation–diagnosis–prediction framework developed in this study can provide a reference for the assessment and optimized management of regional water resource conservation and intensive utilization.