Estimation of Water Supply Areas in Global Cities Using Population Data for High-Resolution Global Water Resource Assessment

Abstract

While the goal is to increase the resolution of global hydrological models, this study aims to develop a method for estimating urban areas and their water intake and supply systems at 5-minute resolution in order to reproduce the water supply systems of real cities.

In this study, city masks for 1860 cities were generated using four types of data: population, land area, city center coordinates, and city area population. The basic algorithm is to extract densely populated areas and find a range that matches the city area population.

In addition, an urban center mask with two new conditions was defined as a method for estimating urban areas that more closely resemble actual water supply systems.

The results of this study, in combination with river data, define intake and drainage points for each river, leading to more realistic surface water flows in more than 1,500 cities.