Sustainability assessment approaches based on water-energy Nexus: Fictions and nonfictions about non-conventional water resources

In arid and semi-arid regions of the world, non-conventional water resources are considered as alternative water resources and a long-term rescue plan against severe water scarcity. To avoid negative impacts, some criteria and indices are required to justify the extent of this utilization. Production of non-conventional waters requires energy while consumption of energy implies various financial and environmental impacts. In this study, Relative Sustainability Probability has been estimated by "Sandoval-Solis" and "Multivariate Copula" approaches to shed light on fictions and nonfiction of non-conventional water resources. The proposed method has been implemented in the Kashan catchment in central Iran. Results indicate that the "Multivariate Copula" approach is generating the same results as the "Sandoval-Solis" approach but relatively much easier and much faster. Moreover, the proposed method could be inspiringly promoted to higher dimensions of Copula leading to more precise results in complex human-environment systems. Besides this, results are verifying non-conventional water fictions could not be considered as long term sustainable rescue attempts, particularly so in the case of seawater conveyance. Rethinking of sustainability definition should be considered in futuristic policy makings leading to a shift to untypical development scenarios, such as Halo-Engineering concept, insisting on lower water and energy consumption in arid and semi-arid regions. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.