Abstract: A great difficulty lies in applying the traditional index system to assessing water system connectivity in data-scarce regions, a Gordian knot in the management of ecological water conservancy projects. Based on the easy-to-access satellite data and conventional water quality data, we extract three characteristic indexes – water system connectivity, landscape fragility, and water quality pollution, and establish a comprehensive benefit index (CEI) for the projects of interconnected water systems (PIWS) in data-scarce regions. Then, the Delphi method is used to determine the weight, and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is used to evaluate quantitatively the PIWS in the Gongqingcheng City in 2018 and 2019. The results show that its CEIs of these two years were 2.014 and 1.906 respectively, while its water system connectivity or landscape fragility index did not change significantly and water quality pollution index was the main pressure factor. The CEI-based method can not just assess quantitatively the PIWS effect in the absence of statistical data, but offer a spatiotemporal analysis of the indicators, helping improve the construction of similar projects.

Key words: project of interconnected water systems, comprehensive effect index, data-scarce region, water system connectivity, landscape fragility, water pollution