scholarly journals Advances in Hydrological Forecasting

Forecasting ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-519
Author(s):  
Minxue He ◽  
Haksu Lee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Water System ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Water Resources Planning ◽  
Hydropower Generation ◽  
Hydrological Forecasting ◽  
Drought Mitigation ◽  
Resources Planning ◽  
Inform Decision Making

Hydrological forecasting is of primary importance to better inform decision-making on flood management, drought mitigation, water system operations, water resources planning, and hydropower generation, among others [...]

Disentangling uncertainties in risk-based planning of water resources in the UK

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Pianosi ◽  
Andres Penuela-Fernandez ◽  
Christopher Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sensitivity Analysis ◽  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Water Resources Planning ◽  
Adaptive Planning ◽  
Water Companies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Resources Planning

<p>Proper consideration of uncertainty has become a cornerstone of model-informed planning of water resource systems. In the UK Government’s 2020 Water Resources Planning Guidelines, the word “uncertainty” appears 48 times in 82 pages. This emphasis on uncertainty aligns with the increasing adoption by UK water companies of a “risk-based” approach to their long-term decision-making, in order to handle uncertainties in supply-demand estimation, climate change, population growth, etc. The term “risk-based” covers a range of methods - such as “info-gap”, “robust decision-making” or “system sensitivity analysis” - that come under different names but largely share a common rationale, essentially based on the use of Monte Carlo simulation. This shift in thinking from previous (deterministic) “worst-case” approach to a “risk-based” one is important and has the potential to significantly improve water resources planning practice. However its implementation is diminished by a certain lack of clarity about the terminology in use and about the concrete differences (and similarities) among methods. On top of these difficulties, in the next planning-cycle (2021-2026) two further step changes are introduced: (1) water companies are requested to move from a cost-efficiency approach focused on achieving the supply-demand balance, towards a fully multi-criteria approach that more explicitly encompasses other objectives including environmental sustainability; (2) as a further way to handle long-term uncertainties, they are required to embrace an “adaptive planning” approach. These changes will introduce two new sets of uncertainties around the robust quantification of criteria, particularly environmental ones, and around the attribution of weights to different criteria. This urgently calls for establishing structured approaches to quantify not only the uncertainty in model outputs, but also the sensitivity of those outputs to different forms of uncertainty in the modelling chain that mostly control the variability of the final outcome – the “best value” plan. Without this understanding of critical uncertainties, the risk is that huge efforts are invested on characterising and/or reducing uncertainties that later turn out to have little impact on the final outcome; or that water managers fall back to using oversimplified representation of those uncertainties as a way to escape the huge modelling burden. In this work, we aim at starting to establish a common rationale to “risk-based” methods within the context of a fully multi-criteria approach. We use a proof-of-concept example of a reservoir system in the South-West of England to demonstrate the use of global (i.e. Monte Carlo based) sensitivity analysis to simultaneously quantify output uncertainty and sensitivity, and identify robust decisions. We also discuss the potential of this approach to inform the construction of a “decision tree” for adaptive planning.</p>

scholarly journals Assessment of surface water resources availability using catchment modeling and the results of tracer studies in the meso-scale Migina Catchment, Rwanda

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 15375-15408 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Munyaneza ◽  
A. Mukubwa ◽  
S. Maskey ◽  
J. Wenninger ◽  
S. Uhlenbrook
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Hydrological Model ◽  
Base Flow ◽  
Hydrological Processes ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Water Resources Planning ◽  
Catchment Scale ◽  
Streamflow Data ◽  
Resources Planning

Abstract. In the last couple of years, different hydrological research projects were undertaken in the Migina catchment (243.2 km2), a tributary of the Kagera river in Southern Rwanda. These projects were aimed to understand hydrological processes of the catchment using analytical and experimental approaches and to build a pilot case whose experience can be extended to other catchments in Rwanda. In the present study, we developed a hydrological model of the catchment, which can be used to inform water resources planning and decision making. The semi-distributed hydrological model HEC-HMS (version 3.5) was used with its soil moisture accounting, unit hydrograph, liner reservoir (for base flow) and Muskingum-Cunge (river routing) methods. We used rainfall data from 12 stations and streamflow data from 5 stations, which were collected as part of this study over a period of two years (May 2009 and June 2011). The catchment was divided into five sub-catchments each represented by one of the five observed streamflow gauges. The model parameters were calibrated separately for each sub-catchment using the observed streamflow data. Calibration results obtained were found acceptable at four stations with a Nash–Sutcliffe Model Efficiency of 0.65 on daily runoff at the catchment outlet. Due to the lack of sufficient and reliable data for longer periods, a model validation (split sample test) was not undertaken. However, we used results from tracer based hydrograph separation from a previous study to compare our model results in terms of the runoff components. It was shown that the model performed well in simulating the total flow volume, peak flow and timing as well as the portion of direct runoff and base flow. We observed considerable disparities in the parameters (e.g. groundwater storage) and runoff components across the five sub-catchments, that provided insights into the different hydrological processes at sub-catchment scale. We conclude that such disparities justify the need to consider catchment subdivisions, if such parameters and components of the water cycle are to form the base for decision making in water resources planning in the Migina catchment.

Stakeholders Perspectives on the Use of Indicators in Water Resources Planning and Related Strategic Environmental Assessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (01) ◽  
pp. 1950001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Santos Coelho ◽  
Pedro S. Coelho ◽  
Paula Antunes ◽  
Tomás B. Ramos
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Environmental Assessment ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Strategic Environmental Assessment ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Water Resources Planning ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Integrated Water Management ◽  
Resources Planning

Water resources planning is currently designed to meet emerging challenges and encompassing a more comprehensive and integrated water management. The main focus of current water resources planning is to promote good water resource conditions through the implementation of innovative water policies. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to characterize and assess the status of water resources, monitor the implementation of planned actions, disseminate information and support the decision-making process. Indicators are often regarded as appropriate tools for supporting these tasks, although their use in this context is not imperative. The present study intends to explore the stakeholder perspective on the role of indicators in the water resources planning and management processes and their strategic environmental assessment process using a Portuguese case study. To achieve this objective, semi-structured interviews with the various stakeholder groups involved were conducted. The treatment of the obtained data using content analysis shows that the interviewees consider indicators to be an essential tool for supporting water resources planning. Some participants express concerns and suggest changes to the selection models and to the communication and decision-support capacity of the sets of indicators used. All stakeholders in the process consider that improvements to the indicators to be used in future processes are possible. In light of the results, it can be concluded that there is a long way to go for indicators to be used to promote better communication with stakeholders and to support decision-making processes; simultaneously, they can form the basis for the review and development of the subsequent cycle of the planning process.

scholarly journals A social-economic-engineering combined framework for decision making in water resources planning

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 675-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. S. Chung ◽  
K. S. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Stakeholder Participation ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Water Quantity ◽  
Water Resources Planning ◽  
Resources Planning

Abstract. This study develops a social-economic-engineering combined framework for decision making in water resources planning. This framework consists of four parts which are to spatially identify the grades on hydrological vulnerability (potential streamflow depletion and potential water quality deterioration), to evaluate the monetary values of improvements on hydrological vulnerability grades using the choice experiment method, to derive an alternative evaluation index (AEI) to quantify the effectiveness of all alternatives, and to combine the derived willingness-to-pays (WTPs) with the AEI and do the cost-benefit analysis of feasible alternatives. This framework includes the stakeholder participation in order to quantify the preferences with regard to management objectives (water quantity and quality) and WTPs of alternatives. Finally, the economic values of each alternative can be estimated by this study which combines the WTPs for improvements on hydrologic vulnerability grades with the AEI. The proposed procedure is applied in the Anyangcheon watershed which has been highly urbanized for past thirty years. As a result, WTPs are $0.24~$10.08/month-household for water quantity and $0.80~$8.60/month-household for water quality and residents of the five regions among six have higher WTPs for water quality improvement. Finally, since three of ten alternatives have BC>0, they can be proposed to the decision makers. This systematic screening procedure will provide decision makers with the flexibility to obtain stakeholders' consensus for water resources planning.

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