Application of the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) Model to Quantitative Water Balance Modelling in the Upper Hron River Basin (Slovakia)

Abstract

The assessment of water resources and the availability of water in a river basin is one of the main tasks enabling efficient water management. Recent developments in the computer industry and information technology allow us to create powerful computer systems for solving water management balances. Their advantage is in their ability to solve variations with the help of computers, both in the sources and in the water requirements. In Slovakia, at present, the individual elements of the water management balance are divided and evaluated separately, i.e., into the surface and groundwater, and these are further divided into a quantitative and a qualitative component. The paper aims to model the retrospective quantitative water management balance of surface waters using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) simulation balance software. The water management balance of surface waters is evaluated in a monthly time step in selected profiles in the Hron River basin for the period 2010 - 2015. The data input to the model were flows, abstractions, discharges, and manipulations of reservoirs. The paper is focused on the functionality of the WEAP simulation model with respect to the implementation of the current methodology of water management balances in Slovakia, both in terms of the details of the information input and their amount and also in the time required for their preparation and compatibility. We show that the software does not require very detailed input data and offers an integrated approach to solving various problems in the management of water resources. The WEAP software has a user-friendly graphic user interface (GUI) that provides the ability to present and interpret results in the form of tables and graphs. Its application in a selected pilot river basin showed that it could be an easy-to-use model building tool for optimal and successful development, planning and forecasting in water management and the knowledge of water redistribution in space and over time in Slovakia.