Simulation of Future Land Use for Water Management: Assessing the suitability of scenario-based modelling

The problem of water shortage is getting increased attention in the field of water management, even in the wet Netherlands. Good quality ground and surface water may become too scarce to allow for sustainable use for various functions. In order to assess the magnitude of this problem in the Netherlands, a water shortage study has been started in which the impact of land use change is an important issue. Land use models can help translate coherent sets of hypotheses regarding future developments, scenarios, storylines, into maps of a possible future. By developing scenarios that are clearly different from each other, especially on the factors that influence the problem of water shortage, divergent images of the future were generated for 2030. In this way, a first impression was developed for the bandwidth in which future developments can occur. The goal of this paper is to assess the applicability of scenario-based land use modelling in water shortage studies