Water Resources Systems Research Articles

Predicting River Flow Using an AI-Based Sequential Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System

Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been successfully adopted in predictive modeling to capture the nonlinearity of natural systems. The high seasonal variability of rivers in cold weather regions poses a challenge to river flow forecasting, which tends to be complex and data demanding. This study proposes a novel technique to forecast flows that use a single-input sequential adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) along the Athabasca River in Alberta, Canada. After estimating the optimal lead time between four hydrometric stations, gauging data measured near the source were used to predict river flow near the mouth, over approximately 1000 km. The performance of this technique was compared to nonsequential and multi-input ANFISs, which use gauging data measured at each of the four hydrometric stations. The results show that a sequential ANFIS can accurately predict river flow (r2 = 0.99, Nash–Sutcliffe = 0.98) with a longer lead time (6 days) by using a single input, compared to nonsequential and multi-input ANFIS (2 days). This method provides accurate predictions over large distances, allowing for flow forecasts over longer periods of time. Therefore, governmental agencies and community planners could utilize this technique to improve flood prevention and planning, operations, maintenance, and the administration of water resource systems.

Study on water cycle simulation model of multi-source and multi-functional irrigation area based on SWAT model (I): Principles and construction methods

Aiming at the water cycle simulation of multi-sources and multi-functional irrigation area, the coupling relationship between natural water cycle and social water cycle was established based on SWAT model. The methods of sub basins divisions in SWAT model were improved, which were incorporated into the improved SWAT model. The water cycle process of complex water resource system and the response to various human activities in irrigation area were simulated accurately and quantitatively to meet the needs of accurate water resource management.

One-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Modeling of the Euphrates River and Prediction of Hydraulic Parameters

Forecasting techniques are essential in the planning, design, and management of water resource systems. The numerical model introduced in this study turns governing differential equations into systems of linear or non-linear equations in the flow field, thereby revealing solutions. This one-dimensional hydrodynamic model represents the varied unsteady flow found in natural channels based on the Saint-Venant Equations. The model consists of the equations for the conservation of mass and momentum, which are recognized as very powerful mathematical tools for studying an important class of water resource problems. These problems are characterized by time dependence of flow and cover a wide range of phenomena. The formulations, held up by the four-point implicit finite difference scheme, solve the nonlinear system of equations using the Newton-Raphson iteration method with a modified Gaussian elimination technique. The model is calibrated using data on the Euphrates River during the early spring flood in 2015. It is verified by its application to an ideal canal and to the reach selected at the Euphrates River; this application is also used to predict the effect of hydraulic parameters on the river’s flow characteristics. A comparison between model results and field data indicates the feasibility of our technique and the accuracy of results (R2 = 0.997), meaning that the model is ready for future application whenever field observations are available.

Application of Reservoir Performance Indices on Kainji Reservoir System

Resilience may be defined as a yardstick that specifies the extent a reservoir recuperates when it fails previously. A reliable water resource system speedily returns to an acceptable state after a failure. Vulnerability measures severity or extent of failures or letdowns, if and once they occur. Sustainability index (SI) provides a sign of fundamental nature with respects to probable unwanted repercussions if imbalance of waters occurs. Sustainability index (SI) can also be expressed as a mean of reliability, resilience and vulnerability. This study employs commonly used indices (reliability, resilience, and Vulnerability) to assess the performance of Kainji reservoir system. To attain this, rain fall and river flow data were obtained from Kainji Hydrological station in New Bussa Nigeria. Analysis using MAKESENS software was used on the rainfall and river flows to look at the extreme events. In order to determine the performance of the reservoir system some reservoir performance indices were employed, these are; vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability index. This is achieved by adopting relevant existing equations. Reservoir flows and storages ware employed, different draft ratios were considered (0.3- 1.0). Varying demand levels were also chosen (0 – 0.8) as against the coefficient of variation to look at the monotonic behaviour of resilience against the various levels of demand. Volume reliability falls repeatedly as draft/ MAR upsurges and bigger values were attained as S/MAR rises. The analysis on the reservoir shows that as demand decreases the sustainability increases and also the higher the storage ratio the higher the sustainability index. It also shows that as draft ratio increases the resilience decreases, and because the draft ratio decreases the resilience increases. The reservoir system was classified as within year system, which suggests high resilience, less vulnerable and sustainable. The operation rule shows the need for optimization.

Interval-Parameter Two-Stage Stochastic Programming (IPTSP) Model of Ecological Water Replenishment Scheme in the National Nature Reserve for Improved Suitable Habitat for Rare and Endangered Migrant Birds

In this work, an interval-parameter two-stage stochastic programming (IPTSP) model of water resources allocation was established for maximizing the restored habitat area of large, rare, and endangered water birds by adjusting the recommended scheme of water replenishment under different scenarios and constraints. The established model can efficiently deal with the uncertainties, such as the interval parameters and random variables, in the management system of water resources simultaneously. A case study was conducted in the Momoge National Nature Reserve (MNNR) in northeast China to maximize the restored habitat area of large, rare and endangered water birds based on limited water resources. According to the previous studies, a water area with a depth of 0–40 cm is a suitable habitat area in the MNNR for the Siberian crane, oriental stork, and red-crowned crane. The results of the present work show that the habitat area restored by water replenishment schemes under low, medium, and high flood flow scenarios after optimization increased in comparison to 13.36 × 103 ha of the recommended scheme, with an increase of [0.62, 5.23], [1.49, 6.42], and [2.43, 7.17] × 103 ha, respectively (the two numbers within each bracket represent the lower and upper bounds of the restored habitat areas). As a result, the carrying capacity of suitable habitat areas increased by [0.82, 6.88], [1.96, 8.45], and [3.21, 9.43] × 103 birds, correspondingly. The restored wetland area of the project recommendation scheme was 34.23 × 103 ha, and that of the optimal water replenishment schemes was [29.35, 41.01], [31.02, 44.13], and [33.88, 46.04] × 103 ha, respectively under the three flood flow scenarios. The results reveal that the model constructed in this work realizes the optimization and adjustment of the initial scheme to an increased restored wetland and habitat area with an increase in the flow level. Here, the upper bound of the interval value mentioned above is significantly higher than the lower bound value, which indicates that a feasible decision space was provided for decision makers to optimize and adjust the recommended scheme on the basis of the actual situation. The model-optimized schemes significantly improved the utilization of limited water resources. The results of this study can provide valuable theoretical support for the restoration and protection of rare and endangered water bird habitats and planning and management of water resources.

A “carrier-load” perspective method for investigating regional water resource carrying capacity

Many regions globally have been facing the challenges of water scarcity and water pollution along with the rampant urbanization process. These challenges highlight the urgency to investigate appropriately the regional water resource carrying capacity (RWRCC) which is a metric for examining and guiding sustainable regional development. Although existing studies have devoted efforts on RWRCC research, the definition of RWRCC and its evaluation method remain arguable. Given this background, this paper introduces a “carrier-load” perspective method for investigating RWRCC. In developing this method, RWRCC performance is determined jointly by two components, namely, carrier and load of regional water resources system. The two components are comprehended and identified through examining the regional water cycling system. A measurement model for RWRCC is established by investigating the interaction between carrier and load. The effectiveness of the “carrier-load” method on RWRCC is demonstrated by conducting an empirical study to 31 provinces of China. The results reveal that the RWRCC performances vary significantly between different regions as they are subject to different performances of carrier and load. The proposed “carrier-load” method provides a theoretical reference for conducting RWRCC research. The evaluation results by applying the method can facilitate decision-makers to formulate tailor-made policy instruments at regional level to ensure the capabilities of water resources are not overloaded or less-utilized in achieving their sustainable development mission.

Multiple-risk assessment of water supply, hydropower and environment nexus in the water resources system

Hydropower has been one of the effective and reliable renewable sources utilized for electricity generation globally, which forms over 70% of all the renewable energy measures since 2016. However, this effective energy source can be greatly affected by the uneven spatiotemporal distributions of water resources in the catchment, leading to the potential risks of insufficient water supply, hydropower and ecological water uses. In this study, the multi-dimensional models by coupling water supply, hydropower generation and environment effects were developed to improve the efficiency and sustainability of water resources utilization. To this end, the joint distributions and conditional expectation models were established to analyze the nexus of water supply, hydropower and environment variables, thereby to evaluate multiple risks in the water resources system. For the validation and demonstration of the proposed method, the upper Yangtze River Basin was selected for a case study through multivariate analysis under different conditions. The application results of bivariate analysis indicated that the probability of water supply exceeding a threshold value decreases gradually with the increase of hydropower generation, which means that the risk of insufficient water supply increases with the increasing of the hydropower generation. Specifically, when the frequency of hydropower generation exceeds 90%, both the expected values of water supply sufficiency and water use sustainability will decrease sharply, causing potential risks of water supply insufficiency and environment damage at upstream of the dam. Furthermore, the application results of trivariate analysis evidenced that different combinations of hydropower generation and ecological water use may be achievable for optimally compromising the water resources supply and utilization. The results and findings of this study may provide useful implications for effective multiple function-based development of water resources, with aims to reduce the water supply risks as well as to improve the water utilization efficiency and environmental sustainability.

Identifying Capabilities and Potentials of System Dynamics in Hydrology and Water Resources as a Promising Modeling Approach for Water Management

Agriculture is the most important sector with regard to water resources management due to its social, economic, hydrological, and environmental aspects, and many scholars and researchers have been driven to investigate the dynamic interrelationships among hydrological, environmental, and socioeconomic factors affecting agriculture. The system dynamics (SD) approach has become widely used because of its merits and benefits as a tool to deal with complex, dynamic problems and systems with many aspects and components that are involved and must be understood to ensure sound decisions regarding water and hydrological systems. Although agricultural water management needs to be studied as a main part of water management, socioeconomic management, and environmental management requiring the use of SD, this review shows that SD is currently used to a limited extent in terms of agricultural water management. This paper sheds light on the studies and investigations on the use of SD in the water sector and highlights the strengths of SD in order to encourage researchers to use this promising method to manage such a vital resource. Accordingly, this review seeks to include a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of existing publications and scholarly papers on the use of SD modeling as an effective technique for dealing with different problems associated with planning, management, and analysis of hydrology and water resources systems. Recent trends in the integration of SD with other modeling systems, such as artificial intelligence systems, are discussed along with the limitations and challenges facing application. This article makes a new contribution by giving a foundation of references and studies for scholars, researchers, and academics which encourages future investigation in employing the SD approach to hydrology and water resources management and planning, especially with agricultural water.

Comprehensive evaluation on water resource carrying capacity based on DPESBR framework: A case study in Guiyang, southwest China

Water resource is the crucial strategy resource for sustaining development, and is also a fundamental basis resource for building ecological environment, especially in karst areas of southwest China. In this study, the DPESBR conceptual model was first proposed and used to conduct sustainability evaluation on regional water resources in Guiyang. Based on the DPESBR model, 42 indicators were chosed and empowered by adopting combination weight. Results showed that the pressure on local water resources increased with soaring of total population and proportion of domestic water used by urban and rural residents. Countermeasures and options adopted by the local population had reduced the amount of agricultural irrigation water consumption and industrial water use ratio during the production course of regional agriculture and industry, but the increased water use scale had brought about a growth in resource depletion. Moreover, the sustained development of water resource system in the area was on the decline because of joint impacts of water contamination and use. Humanity could achieve the sustaining utilization of water resources in the region and the sustained progress of compound system by making adjustments on medium and short time bucket factors such as cultural heritages, value concepts, economical framework and technical makeup.

Sensitivity exploration of water balance in scenarios of future changes: a case study in an Andean regulated river basin

Effects of climate change on water resources availability have been studied extensively; however, few studies have explored the sensitivity of water to several factors of change. This study aimed to explore the sensitive of water balance in water resources systems due to future changes of climate, land use and water use. Dynamical and statistical downscaling were applied to four global climate models for the projections of precipitation and temperature of two climate scenarios RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5. Land use projections were carried out through a combination of Markov chains and cellular automata methods. These projections were introduced in a hydrologic model for future water supply evaluation, and its interactions with water use projections derived from a statistical analysis which served to assessment deficits and surplus in water to 2050. This approach was applied in the Machangara river basin located in the Ecuadorian southern Andes. Results showed that the water supply exceeds the water demand in most scenarios; however, taking into account the seasonality, there were months like August and January that would have significant water deficit in joint scenarios in the future. These results could be useful for planners formulating actions to achieve water security for future generations.

System Dynamics Modeling for Supporting Drought-Oriented Management of the Jucar River System, Spain

The management of water in systems where the balance between resources and demands is already precarious can pose a challenge and it can be easily disrupted by drought episodes. Anticipated drought management has proved to be one of the main strategies to reduce their impact. Drought economic, environmental, and social impacts affect different sectors that are often interconnected. There is a need for water management models able to acknowledge the complex interactions between multiple sectors, activities, and variables to study the response of water resource systems to drought management strategies. System dynamics (SD) is a modeling methodology that facilitates the analysis of interactions and feedbacks within and between sectors. Although SD has been applied for water resource management, there is a lack of SD models able to regulate complex water resource systems on a monthly time scale and considering multiple reservoir operating rules, demands, and policies. In this paper, we present an SD model for the strategic planning of drought management in the Jucar River system, incorporating dynamic reservoir operating rules, policies, and drought management strategies triggered by a system state index. The DSS combines features from early warning and information systems, allowing for the simulation of drought strategies, evaluating their economic impact, and exploring new management options in the same environment. The results for the historical period show that drought early management can be beneficial for the performance of the system, monitoring the current state of the system, and activating drought management measures results in a substantial reduction of the economic impact of droughts.

Study on Assessment Index System of Water Resources

Taking strategy of sustainable development as a guide, the paper briefly explains the connotation of sustainable utilization of water resources, and establishes assessment index system, including water resources, social development, economic growth and ecological environment, and determines assessment index criteria. The AHP is used to determine weight and the grey correlation is used to build assessment model. The assessment index system of water resources is studied in combination with socio-economic development and ecological environmental protection criteria.

Water resources allocation in Erhai irrigated district considering catchment water-cycle health

In order to realize the healthy circulation of Erhai Basin water system, this paper constructs the Mike basin simulation model of Erhai Basin water resource system through the concept of water resource comprehensive allocation. Which is based on the principle of Erhai Lake water ecological environment protection and follows the principle of ecological priority, sanitary water into the lake, double control of total amount and consumption, and water conservation and emission reduction. The results show that agriculture irrigated area of Erhai Basin should be gradually reduced to 472000 mu, and 48200 mu of wetland ecological pool should be increased, which is used as the collection area of basin landscape and irrigation return water. After adjusting the crop planting pattern according to the depth of water saving in Erhai irrigation area, the goal of controlling the agricultural water consumption to be no more than 201 million cubic metre and the total water consumption to be less than 366 million cubic metre should be achieved. The effect of reclaimed water irrigation on water saving and emission reduction is considerable. The application of reclaimed water irrigation can reduce the amount of clean water used in paddy growth period by 46.4%, and the amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied by 30.2%. The replacement rate of garlic reclaimed water can reach 100%. After the comprehensive allocation of water resources, it can supply 501 million cubic metre of ecological water in the river channels and 359 million cubic metre of water out of the river channels. Through the comprehensive utilization project of farmland drainage water and the construction of ecological regulation and storage belt, all irrigation drainage water should be reused and zero discharge can be realized. TN and TP emissions in irrigated area will be reduced by 39.3% and 46.3% respectively. Compared with the current situation, Erhai Lake water inflow and cleanly water inflow increased by 65 million cubic metre and 134 million cubic metre respectively. The annual average water level of the lake will be 0.15m higher than the current situation.

Time-Series Prediction of Streamflows of Malaysian Rivers Using Data-Driven Techniques

A reliable and continuous streamflow simulation capability is essential for systematic management of water resource systems. Thus, predicting streamflow is important for water management and flood control. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a few data-driven procedures, such as the least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM), M5P tree, and random forest (RF) algorithm for estimating streamflows of the Bernam and Tualang rivers of Malaysia. Three standard statistical measures, i.e., correlation coefficient (CE), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE), were used to evaluate the performance of the developed model. The performance of RF-based models was found to be higher than that of LS-SVM and M5P-based models with respect to predicting streamflow for both the rivers.

Trend analysis of rain indicators for the state of Bahia, Brazil

The concern about the climate issue has been increasing since climate change influence the water resources system. For this reason, this study sought to identify the presence of trends in the historic series of two meteorological variables: total annual precipitation and number of rain days, in the state of Bahia, Brazil, in order to verify if the precipitation regime is being affected by the global climate change. Two trend tests were applied: Mann-Kendall and Linear Regression, with significance levels of 5% and 10%, in the historical series of 32pluviometric stations distributed throughout the state. The results of the two testes were similar, which guarantees that both can be used for detection of changes in rain pattern. The study confirms that in a specific region of Bahia, more specifically in the central and eastern areas, there is a reduction trend in the historical series of annual precipitation. Regarding the number of rain days, no trend conclusions were observed.

Systems Approach to Management of Water Resources—Toward Performance Based Water Resources Engineering

Global change, that results from population growth, global warming and land use change (especially rapid urbanization), is directly affecting the complexity of water resources management problems and the uncertainty to which they are exposed. Both, the complexity and the uncertainty, are the result of dynamic interactions between multiple system elements within three major systems: (i) the physical environment; (ii) the social environment; and (iii) the constructed infrastructure environment including pipes, roads, bridges, buildings, and other components. Recent trends in dealing with complex water resources systems include consideration of the whole region being affected, explicit incorporation of all costs and benefits, development of a large number of alternative solutions, and the active (early) involvement of all stakeholders in the decision-making. Systems approaches based on simulation, optimization, and multi-objective analyses, in deterministic, stochastic and fuzzy forms, have demonstrated in the last half of last century, a great success in supporting effective water resources management. This paper explores the future opportunities that will utilize advancements in systems theory that might transform management of water resources on a broader scale. The paper presents performance-based water resources engineering as a methodological framework to extend the role of the systems approach in improved sustainable water resources management under changing conditions (with special consideration given to rapid climate destabilization). An illustrative example of a water supply network management under changing conditions is used to convey the basic principles of performance-based water resources engineering methodology.

Transboundary water allocation in critical scarcity conditions: a stochastic bankruptcy approach

Abstract A common problem in water resource allocation is to design a stable and feasible mechanism of water sharing in critical scarcity conditions. The task becomes very challenging when the water demand exceeds the available water resources reserves. To address this pervasive allocation problem related to transboundary rivers, the bankruptcy method is used. The bankruptcy method distributes water among riparian states when their total demand exceeds the total available water. This paper describes a new methodology for the allocation of scarce water resources in a complex system using a stochastic game theory which is an extension of bankruptcy theory. The authors have also proposed ‘weighted bankruptcy’ approach that can be used under a stochastic setting. The weighted bankruptcy approach favors agents with ‘high agricultural productivity’. The bankruptcy rules have been applied in the water resource system in four critical scarcity scenarios. The available water is allocated under the simple and weighted bankruptcy rules. The results showed that under all four scenarios, the weighted bankruptcy rules favor the agents which have a high agricultural productivity. The stochastic bankruptcy approach under the simple and the weighted bankruptcy rules can provide important strategic information for better management and sustainable sharing of water resources.

Connotation analysis and evaluation index system construction of regional agricultural soil and water resource composite system harmony

In view of the insufficient judgment criterion for the sustainable development of regional agricultural systems and the problem of easily increasing system uncertainty, by introducing the theory of harmony, the regional agricultural water and soil resource system can be regarded as a composite system and can be integrated with research on harmony. This study was based on a systematic literature review used to define the theory and judgment basis of agricultural water and soil resource composite system harmony (AWSRCSH). The Jiansanjiang Management Bureau of Heilongjiang Provincial Agricultural Reclamation in China was used as an example to construct an evaluation index system of AWSRCSH. The results showed that the so-called AWSRCSH indicated that the humanities, agriculture and resource subsystems were in healthy states of operation, the external subsystems were tuned and balanced, and the entire system presented a stable, consistent and balanced form. According to the “three deletions, one consolidation and one addition” strategy, the index primary election library (347 indicators) was reduced to 79 indicators, and the variation coefficient-R clustering-gray correlation advantage (VC-RC-GCA) model and expert knowledge were used to obtain 23 quantitative indicators and 3 qualitative indicators, of which there were 7, 11 and 8 indicators in the fields of humanities, agriculture and resources, respectively. By comparing the RC-GCA model screening results and the human-water harmony index system features, the rationality and reliability of the index system built based on the VC-RC-GCA model were verified.

Spatio-temporal evolution and influencing factors of water resource carrying capacity in Shiyang River Basin: based on the geographical detector method

Abstract In this article, the comprehensive evaluation of water resource carrying capacity (for short WRCC) in Shiyang River Basin is the objective. Based on the comprehensive evaluation model of regional WRCC, the spatial and temporal change characteristics of the WRCC in Shiyang River Basin in 2007, 2011 and 2016 have been analyzed. Moreover, the influence elements of water resource carrying capacity in Shiyang River Basin are detected by the geographical detector. The results show that: (1) In terms of the spatial dimension, water resources in Shiyang River Basin are not in accordance with the distribution of social and economic development and population distribution, presenting a prominent contradiction between supply and demand of water resources; (2) in terms of the temporal dimension, the pressure on water resources in Shiyang River Basin has gradually increased, and the area of overload, light overload and serious overload has been augmented; (3) the geographical detector indicates that the influences of the water resources system and coordinating system factors are declining, and the influences of the social economy system and ecological factor are obviously increasing. The influences of the interaction with any two factors are stronger than that of a single factor, and the synergistic influences of two factors are aggravated.

Probabilistic trade-off assessment between competing and vulnerable water users – The case of the Senegal River basin

The development of river basins often involves trading-off competing objectives in an uncertain environment. Through a stochastic analysis, the trade-off discovery can be enriched to identify vulnerabilities; that is, the sensitivity of those losses with respect to changing conditions in the basin. Using the Senegal River basin as a case study, we generate probabilistic trade-offs to analyze the competition between objectives that are vulnerable to both natural and anthropogenic factors. Here the natural factors essentially correspond to the hydrologic processes and their natural variability, while the anthropogenic factors include future water allocation policies as well as the level of development of the water resources system. Our analysis of the trade-off relationships reveals the existence of two coalitions of objectives: traditional food production (agriculture and floodplain fisheries) versus hydropower-navigation. The probabilistic trade-offs also show that of the two main coalitions of objectives, the one dealing with traditional food production is much more vulnerable to changes in both hydro-climatic conditions and allocation policies. Since traditional food production mostly concerns economically and politically-marginal communities in downstream riparian countries, this larger vulnerability should be factored in when negotiating water and benefits sharing schemes.