Abstract
AbstractResilient water supplies in England need to be secured in the face of challenges of population growth, climate change and environmental sustainability. We propose a blueprint for water resources planning that uses system simulation modelling to estimate the frequency, duration and severity of water shortages at present and in the context of future plans and scenarios. We use multiobjective optimisation tools to explore trade‐offs between these risk metrics and cost of alternative plans, and we use sensitivity analysis to identify plans that robustly achieve targets for tolerable risk, alongside other performance objectives. The results of a case study in the Thames basin demonstrate that the proposed methodology is feasible given commonly available data sets and models. The proposed method provides evidence with which to develop water resource management plans that demonstrably balance the risks of water shortages, costs to water users and environmental constraints in an uncertain future.
Highlights
Water companies in England are required to provide safe and wholesome supplies of water
Practical application has demonstrated the fragility of solutions that are apparently optimal in the Economics of Balancing Supply and Demand (EBSD) methodology (Matrosov et al, 2013a), whilst there may be only slightly suboptimal solutions that perform much better with respect to other criteria
To illustrate the concepts and feasibility of the proposed planning approach, we use the example of the Thames basin, including the Swindon and Oxfordshire (SWOX) and London water resource zones, which has an area of 9948 km2
Summary
Water companies in England are required to provide safe and wholesome supplies of water. Blueprint for water resource planning in England environment and the ecosystem services that it provides, will intensify pressures on the public water supply In view of these converging pressures of demand, climate change and unsustainable abstractions, the 2014 Water Act introduced a duty to secure the long-term resilience of water supply systems. We set out a blueprint for risk-based water resource planning in England and demonstrate the approach with a simple example for identifying the portfolio and sequence of investments that would deliver a resilient water supply system.
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