A Novel High-Resolution Water Resources Assessment Model (HyDRA version 1.0) for Industrial and Domestic Water Use: A regional application for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries and Jordan

Abstract. Large-scale water models often generalize the methodology for developing regions by relying on coarse assumptions that fail to capture regional socioeconomic dynamics and the constraints of water-scarce systems, resulting in limited accuracy when evaluating water use across diverse economic and resource conditions. This gap is particularly evident in the Middle East, where data scarcity and underrepresentation hinder detailed assessments despite the region’s critical importance in a water-dependent economy. To address this, this study develops HyDRA (“High-Resolution Water Resources Assessment Model”) model, a model designed to improve the estimation of industrial and domestic water use through dynamic socioeconomic drivers and regionally available data. The model disaggregates industry into ten subsectors nearly covering all the industrial activities—electricity generation, petro-refining, chemical and petrochemical industries, cement, basic metals, food and beverage, paper and pulp, oil extraction, mining , and other manufacturing—each linked to distinct production indicators and corresponding water use intensities, alongside a domestically adaptive module that captures variations in per capita water use driven by demographic, economic, and infrastructure changes. Implemented at a fine spatial resolution of 3 arcseconds (~90 m), the model enables detailed, location-specific estimates of water withdrawal and consumption at both national and subnational scales. Its application to the GCC countries and Jordan over the period 1990–2025 provides a long-term reconstruction across hydro-economically contrasting systems, where the GCC represents one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of water-intensive industrial activity, while Jordan reflects a structurally distinct yet equally water-scarce system. Together, these regions form a critical testbed for analyzing water economy dynamics under extreme scarcity. By explicitly resolving sectoral production structures and socioeconomic adaptation, the model advances beyond conventional top-down scaling approaches, improving cross-country comparability while preserving regional specificity. Although demonstrated for the GCC and Jordan, the model structure is transferable and can be extended to other regions, given appropriate socioeconomic inputs and harmonized statistical data.