Evaluation of the Benefits of Urban Water Resource Utilization Based on the Catastrophe and Emergy Methods

The evaluation of the benefits of urban water resource utilization, which include supporting life and industrial and agricultural production, is important for decision-making and policy formulation in urban water management. However, since life cannot be quantified in terms of economic value, it is difficult for traditional economic analysis methods to comprehensively evaluate the benefits of urban water resource utilization. Output per unit water and the proportion of water to resource inputs were proposed to evaluate these benefits. An evaluation index system was established based on catastrophe theory, which evaluates the system under the condition that the relative importance of indices is determined and the exact weights are unknown. Emergy theory, which reflects the process of energy conversion, was introduced to analyze various benefits of urban water resource utilization. By applying these methods to evaluate these benefits in Zhengzhou, China, the author verified the rationality of the proposed methods, providing new ideas to evaluate these benefits.