Using a detailed abstraction database to plan assessing current and future water resources availability in Scotland.

Scotland’s land and water resources are increasingly vulnerable to periods of droughts, impacting water users and the water environment. Abstractions from sectors with high water demands are forecasted to exacerbate the direct impacts of climate change by amplifying both the frequency and the duration of drought events. Previous studies that have assessed the potential future water scarcity in Scotland were limited by the lack of available data on actual abstractions. These studies assumed that all abstraction licences were used at their maximum (i.e., were based on worst case scenario); and did not account for public water supply abstractions. Therefore, there is a need for accessible data on timely, open, and detailed abstraction return values for all sectors to overcome these limitations to allow a more accurate assessment of the current state of Scotland’s water resources and their vulnerability to climate extremes. We have collated a database that comprises of abstracted daily volumes from different locations within the water bodies, for various sectors from Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and abstracted daily volumes for public water supply aggregated at the catchment level from Scottish Water. We then use these daily abstraction time series available for the common time 2018-2022, in conjunction with available daily river flow historical and future projections, to determine the available volume of water, per catchment, per day. This enables extracting the drought events, and drought characteristics such as frequency, duration, and intensity of droughts. This research will inform future water resources management in Scotland by identifying which regions and sectors may be subject to increased water scarcity pressures in the future.