Strategic assessment of hydropower resilience under climate change: an integrated SWOT-PESTEL perspective within the water–energy nexus

ABSTRACT Hydropower is central to renewable-energy transitions and to the Water–Energy Nexus (WEN), but its resilience is increasingly shaped by hydrological variability, competing water demands, aging infrastructure, and changing governance conditions. This study develops an evidence-weighted framework that integrates SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) with PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) analysis. Twenty-two publicly available institutional reports were examined through 33 structured questions, producing 726 source-question evaluations. Documentary evidence was synthesized into retained SWOT factors and weighted according to source coverage, evidence density, geographic breadth, and recency before being mapped to PESTEL dimensions. Intersectoral water-use conflict and competition, climate change and extreme weather, renewable-energy integration, and adaptive reservoir management emerged as the most strongly supported strategic factors. Technological conditions most strongly reinforced the strengths of hydropower, whereas social, environmental, political, and economic pressures dominated weaknesses and threats. Alternative weighting scenarios produced highly stable rankings (Spearman's rho = 0.976–0.995). The framework provides a transparent and transferable basis for identifying strategic priorities, while its numerical outputs should be recalibrated with basin-specific hydrological, institutional, and stakeholder data.