Integrating supply uncertainties from stochastic modeling into integrated water resource management: Case study of the Saskatchewan River Basin

AbstractA warming climate and land management intensification have altered water supply characteristics in many regions of the world. Incorporation of water supply uncertainties into long-term water resources planning and management is, therefore, significant from both a scientific and societal perspective. This study proposes a set of analyses for integrated water resources management under changing water supply and demand expansion based on a newly developed methodology for vulnerability assessment. The basin of interest for the proposed analysis is the interprovincial Saskatchewan River Basin (SaskRB) in Canada, which supports a wide range of water demands, from municipal and industrial use to irrigated agriculture and hydropower. Proposals for an increase in irrigated area are used as a context for exploring the joint effects of current and future water supply uncertainty and increasing irrigation demand conditions on the water resources system. Changing water supply conditions are represented by pert...

[1]  Laurna Kaatz,et al.  Two Faces of Uncertainty: Climate Science and Water Utility Planning Methods , 2012 .

[2]  Sajjad Ahmad,et al.  Evaluating Municipal Water Conservation Policies Using a Dynamic Simulation Model , 2010 .

[3]  A. Sankarasubramanian,et al.  Impacts of Near-Term Climate Change and Population Growth on Within-Year Reservoir Systems , 2015 .

[4]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  SYSTEM DYNAMICS MODELING OF RESERVOIR OPERATIONS FOR FLOOD MANAGEMENT , 2000 .

[5]  A. Bagheri,et al.  Navigating towards sustainable development: A system dynamics approach , 2006 .

[6]  A. Elshorbagy,et al.  System dynamics approach to assess the sustainability of reclamation of disturbed watersheds , 2005 .

[7]  Joseph R. Kasprzyk,et al.  Water Resources Management: The Myth, the Wicked, and the Future , 2009 .

[8]  Roger N. Jones An Environmental Risk Assessment/Management Framework for Climate Change Impact Assessments , 2001 .

[9]  Xi Chen,et al.  A Dynamic Model for Vulnerability Assessment of Regional Water Resources in Arid Areas: A Case Study of Bayingolin, China , 2013, Water Resources Management.

[10]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  Simulation of Multiple Hydropower Reservoir Operations Using System Dynamics Approach , 2014, Water Resources Management.

[11]  Casey Brown,et al.  Dynamic reservoir management with real‐option risk hedging as a robust adaptation to nonstationary climate , 2012 .

[12]  Casey Brown,et al.  Special Section on Climate Change and Water Resources: Climate Nonstationarity and Water Resources Management , 2012 .

[13]  Keith Beven,et al.  I believe in climate change but how precautionary do we need to be in planning for the future? , 2011 .

[14]  Shuai Wei,et al.  Application of System Dynamics to Water Security Research , 2013, Water Resources Management.

[15]  Junho Song,et al.  Strategic planning for drought mitigation under climate change , 2015 .

[16]  M. Mariño,et al.  System Dynamics Analysis for Managing Iran’s Zayandeh-Rud River Basin , 2009 .

[17]  Howard S. Wheater,et al.  A stochastic reconstruction framework for analysis of water resource system vulnerability to climate‐induced changes in river flow regime , 2013 .

[18]  R. Stewart,et al.  Water security through scarcity pricing and reverse osmosis: A system dynamics approach , 2015 .

[19]  Saeid Eslamian,et al.  Water transfer as a solution to water shortage: A fix that can Backfire , 2013 .

[20]  Casey Brown,et al.  A semiparametric multivariate, multisite weather generator with low‐frequency variability for use in climate risk assessments , 2013 .

[21]  Y. Ben-Haim Info-Gap Decision Theory: Decisions Under Severe Uncertainty , 2006 .

[22]  Ronny Berndtsson,et al.  Adaptation of surface water supply to climate change in central Iran , 2014 .

[23]  Casey Brown,et al.  A Decision‐Analytic Approach to Managing Climate Risks: Application to the Upper Great Lakes 1 , 2011 .

[24]  Jim W Hall,et al.  Water Security and Society: Risks, Metrics, and Pathways , 2014 .

[25]  Gary Brierley,et al.  The Use of System Dynamics Simulation in Water Resources Management , 2009 .

[26]  J. Hall,et al.  Risk‐based water resources planning: Incorporating probabilistic nonstationary climate uncertainties , 2014 .

[27]  Patricia Gober,et al.  Water security in the Canadian Prairies: science and management challenges , 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[28]  Sajjad Ahmad,et al.  Synthesis of System Dynamics Tools for Holistic Conceptualization of Water Resources Problems , 2012, Water Resources Management.

[29]  Joseph R. Kasprzyk,et al.  Many objective robust decision making for complex environmental systems undergoing change , 2012, Environ. Model. Softw..

[30]  Howard S. Wheater,et al.  Assessing the Vulnerability of Water Supply to Changing Streamflow Conditions , 2014 .

[31]  Casey Brown,et al.  Decision scaling: Linking bottom‐up vulnerability analysis with climate projections in the water sector , 2012 .

[32]  Robert L. Wilby,et al.  Evaluating climate model outputs for hydrological applications , 2010 .

[33]  Richard N. Palmer,et al.  Estimating the Impacts and Uncertainty of Climate Change on a Municipal Water Supply System , 2008 .

[34]  Integrated water resources system dynamics modeling and indicators for sustainable rural community , 2013, Paddy and Water Environment.

[35]  Howard S. Wheater,et al.  On inclusion of water resource management in Earth system models - Part 2: Representation of water supply and allocation and opportunities for improved modeling , 2014 .

[36]  S. Simonovic,et al.  Global water resources modeling with an integrated model of the social-economic-environmental system , 2011 .

[37]  S. Rood,et al.  Climate change and future flows of Rocky Mountain rivers: converging forecasts from empirical trend projection and down‐scaled global circulation modelling , 2010 .

[38]  Patricia Gober,et al.  Managing water in complex systems: An integrated water resources model for Saskatchewan, Canada , 2014, Environ. Model. Softw..

[39]  H. Wheater,et al.  On inclusion of water resource management in Earth system models – Part 1: Problem definition and representation of water demand , 2014 .

[40]  Casey Brown,et al.  An alternate approach to assessing climate risks , 2012 .

[41]  Jonathan D. Herman,et al.  How should robustness be defined for water systems planning under change , 2015 .

[42]  Roger A. Pielke,et al.  Regional climate downscaling: What's the point? , 2012 .

[43]  Hayley J. Fowler,et al.  Linking climate change modelling to impacts studies: recent advances in downscaling techniques for hydrological modelling , 2007 .

[44]  Alireza Nazemi,et al.  Application of copula modelling to the performance assessment of reconstructed watersheds , 2012, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment.

[45]  R. Wilby,et al.  Scenario-neutral approach to climate change impact studies: Application to flood risk , 2010 .

[46]  David G. Groves,et al.  A General, Analytic Method for Generating Robust Strategies and Narrative Scenarios , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[47]  Casey Brown,et al.  The integrated effects of climate and hydrologic uncertainty on future flood risk assessments , 2015 .

[48]  R. Stouffer,et al.  Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? , 2008, Science.

[49]  Howard S. Wheater,et al.  How can the uncertainty in the natural inflow regime propagate into the assessment of water resource systems , 2014 .

[50]  Yousef Hassanzadeh,et al.  Determining the Main Factors in Declining the Urmia Lake Level by Using System Dynamics Modeling , 2011, Water Resources Management.

[51]  Suraje Dessai,et al.  Robust adaptation to climate change , 2010 .

[52]  Casey Brown,et al.  Expanded Decision-Scaling Framework to Select Robust Long-Term Water-System Plans under Hydroclimatic Uncertainties , 2015 .