Abstract

Water scarcity is an ongoing reality in many river basins due to the need for increasingly water use associated with water pollution and climate change. Faced with this situation, it is necessary to know the true value of scarce water resources to contribute to effective water allocation. In this paper, a model to optimize the allocation of water resources with the constraints in terms of hydrology has developed based on the principle of balance in marginal net benefits of water use across sectors, and test applied to solve the optimal water sources allocation in the downstream area of the Dong Nai river system basin with many different water scarcity scenarios. The results show that the model allows simulating relatively good optimized water allocation for the competitive water use demands in the cases of shortage of water, and also allows determining the balanced margin net values/ benefits of raw water corresponding to the different levels of water shortage.