Gridded global dataset of industrial water use predicted using the Random Forest

Spatially distributed industrial water use (IWU) data are essential for effective region-specific water resource management. Such data are often scarce in underdeveloped and developing countries. We propose a random forest regression model to predict IWU at a spatial resolution of 0.5° by combining socioeconomic, climatic, and geographical datasets. These datasets included nighttime light (NL), global power plants, country-wise IWU, elevation data (DEM), gross domestic product (GDP), road density (RD), cropland (CRP), wetland (WLND), population (POP), precipitation (PCP), temperature (TEMP), wet days (WET) per year, and potential evapotranspiration (PET). The results show that RD, CRP, POP, GDP, DEM, and TEMP were the most influential variables. We assessed the accuracy of the global IWU map using published and observed datasets from various sources for the major industrialized countries such as the USA and China from 2000 to 2015. The predicted global map shows a reasonable distribution of grid-wise values for highly industrialized countries and data-scarce regions. Thus, fine-resolution maps can support local planning and decision-making for large basins worldwide.