A Smart Market for Ground Water using the Eigenmodel Approach

This revolutionary technology provides an impressive list of advantages. It provides a venue for trading (a single web site), so users need not search for trading partners. The computer models vet all transactions simultaneously to ensure satisfaction of all relevant environmental constraints such as stream flows. Trading can be done on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Price data is immediately available, and is highly detailed temporally and spatially. Thus, the smart market eliminates transaction costs with water trading, while imposing strict environmental constraints. Perhaps most spectacularly, the system eliminates the market requirement for physical control of water. The proposed system is not a “free market,” but rather a highly controlled auction, in which trading is easy, but constrained to be within the bounds of sustainability.