Groundwater is one of the most important and vital resources in the world. In current decades, increased water demand and pollution threaten groundwater availability. Yet, groundwater governance is a serious challenge and despite many studies focusing on groundwater assessments, its governance has been largely neglected. Smart groundwater governance is one of the most critical areas to improve the sustainable use of this resource in societies and people's livelihood. The main goal of this paper was to introduce a model to evaluate and measure the smartness level of any policy or action as an index. To do so, this study uses a system dynamics (SD) approach to develop a smart groundwater governance (SGG) model to assist policy and decision makers to better understand the short and long-term impacts of their actions, plans, and policies. For this purpose, the SGG index was introduced in the dynamic model, including four indicators (i.e., equitability, efficiency, sustainability, and democracy) and was applied in Iran. The results indicate that groundwater balance is critical (i.e. negative) and the current trend of groundwater governance is highly non-smart in the country. This study concluded that the best strategy to manage this situation and to govern the groundwater resources in a smarter manner includes both increasing the infiltration rate and decreasing the extraction rate (or increase the water efficiency) as the left and right based scenarios. The obtained results also demonstrate the benefits of the SGG index for policy and decision makers in SGG.
Groundwater is one of the most important and vital resources in the world. In current decades, increased water demand and pollution threaten groundwater availability. Yet, groundwater governance is a serious challenge and despite many studies focusing on groundwater assessments, its governance has been largely neglected. Smart groundwater governance is one of the most critical areas to improve the sustainable use of this resource in societies and people's livelihood. The main goal of this paper was to introduce a model to evaluate and measure the smartness level of any policy or action as an index. To do so, this study uses a system dynamics (SD) approach to develop a smart groundwater governance (SGG) model to assist policy and decision makers to better understand the short and long-term impacts of their actions, plans, and policies. For this purpose, the SGG index was introduced in the dynamic model, including four indicators (i.e., equitability, efficiency, sustainability, and democracy) and was applied in Iran. The results indicate that groundwater balance is critical (i.e. negative) and the current trend of groundwater governance is highly non-smart in the country. This study concluded that the best strategy to manage this situation and to govern the groundwater resources in a smarter manner includes both increasing the infiltration rate and decreasing the extraction rate (or increase the water efficiency) as the left and right based scenarios. The obtained results also demonstrate the benefits of the SGG index for policy and decision makers in SGG.