Sabin Ioan Taranu, Inne Vanderkelen, Yoshihide Wada, Ting Tang, Steven Eisenreich, Ann Van Griensven

The use of water in the domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors is necessary for human prosperity and survival. Recognizing the need to understand water scarcity and human contributions to it, various studies have been done over the years, necessitating access to reliable, comprehensive data on historical and projected water use across all sectors. Despite progress in this direction, a significant challenge persists in finding datasets that maintain consistency at both national and subnational levels at the intersection between historical and future projections. This inconsistency is likely attributed to factors such as discordant socio-economical data at the transition between historical and future periods (e.g., GDP, population dynamics, livestock density, land use) and the independent creation of past and scenario datasets without concerted efforts for harmonization. Addressing these issues, this study presents a first holistic approach to harmonize two existing water use datasets across all sectors, encompassing both past and projected periods. The methodology and insights gained from this process are discussed, highlighting the achievement of a fully consistent dataset. The harmonized dataset offers utility for a broad spectrum of applications at the interface between humans, water, and climate.