The water footprint concept has been widely applied to the agriculture sector; however, little attention has been given to industrial products. In this paper, the concept of water footprint is applied to a large steel plant located in a semi-arid basin in the central part of Iran. The limitations of existing research, including the lack of any advanced approach for assessing the virtual water of personnel's food, working in the plant, and the lack of providing independent data sources, are addressed. An improved water footprint model of steel production is proposed based on the water footprint network methodology and the life cycle assessment framework. Ideas from food ecological footprint are applied to measure the water footprint of personnel's foods. The case of Iran demonstrates that the water footprint of steel production is considerably large compared with other industrial products. The results highlight the relevance of production line technology, energy efficiency measures, and human management on reducing the water footprint of steel products. The paper adds to a growing body of literature on environmentally friendly steel production.

中文翻译：

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涉及人员虚拟水的钢铁生产的改进水足迹模型：伊朗案例。

水足迹概念已广泛应用于农业部门；但是，工业产品很少受到关注。本文将水足迹的概念应用于位于伊朗中部半干旱盆地的大型钢铁厂。解决了现有研究的局限性，包括缺乏评估人员食物的虚拟水，在工厂工作的先进方法以及缺乏提供独立数据源的能力。基于水足迹网络方法和生命周期评估框架，提出了一种改进的钢铁生产水足迹模型。食品生态足迹方面的想法被用于衡量人员食品的水足迹。伊朗的案例表明，与其他工业产品相比，钢铁生产的水足迹相当大。结果突出了生产线技术，能效措施和人为管理对减少钢铁产品水足迹的相关性。本文增加了有关环保型钢铁生产的文献资料。