Water Demand Management in Some Arab Countries Using GIS

Abstract

The alarming increase in the scarcity of water in various parts of the world. Water is a main issue in many countries especially in those Arab countries, it has focused a global attention on the need for a stronger and more appropriate water resource management and availability solutions. With about 170 million people in 17 countries suffering from water scarcity and about 275 million in 9 countries having "water stresses" conditions, it becomes imperative for nations to come up with more focused and direct measures that would address and stem this resource scarcity. Water sustainability needs a balance between demand and availability. The main objective of this paper is the application of these  concepts to Arabs countries. Water demand management is about achieving a reduction in the use of water resources, normally through increased efficiency of water application. The management of water resources was not explicitly included in the past from thirty-five years in all most of those countries normative system partly because water was believed to be a free good in mind, and was not accepted to have a price to pay to use it. This work contributed to a low efficiency of water use and waste of it, and water prices are often well below levels needed to cover the costs of the system. Moreover, this contributes to a worse quality of water, and, as quality of water decrease, the management of water resources becomes more challenging and the need to integrate water quality into an overall water resources management grows. The main goal of this paper  is showing, how Geographical  Information Systems (GIS ) can be used to support infrastructure planners and analyst  on water demand of a local area in some Arabs countries such as(Egypt,  Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, KSA and UAE).

Keywords: GIS, Water in land, Water area, XML Schema.