Integrated and Participatory Water Resources Management - Theory (eBook)

Andrea Castelletti, Rodolfo Soncini-Sessa, Enrico Weber (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2007 | 1. Auflage
582 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-08-055141-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Covering the more recent advances in Modelling, Planning, Management and Negotiations for Integrated Water Resource Management, this text brings together knowledge and concepts from Hydrology, System Analysis, Control Theory, Conflict Resolution, and Decision and Negotiation Theory. Without compromising on mathematical rigour, the book maintains a fine line between theory and application, methodology and tools, avoiding getting locked into excessively theoretical and formal development of the issues discussed. The non-technical aspects of water resource systems (such as societal, political and legal concerns) are recognized throughout the book as having a great, if not fundamental, importance to reaching an agreed-upon decision, they are therefore integrated into the more technical and mathematical issues. The book provides a unified, coordinated and comprehensive framework that will facilitate the increasingly appropriate application of the Integrated Water Resource Management paradigm by current and future practising professionals, decision-makers and scientists.

? Integration of technical modelling and control aspects with participatory and decision-making issues
? Insightful and comprehensive treatment of theoretical contents, supported by practical examples
? A wide collection of exercises and project examples based on real-world case studies (with complete solutions)

Inhalt

Front cover 1
Integrated and Participatory Water Resources Management: Theory 4
Copyright page 5
Contents 6
Introduction 16
Part A: Global view 28
Chapter 1. Making decisions: a difficult problem 30
1.1 Interventions, actions and decisions 32
1.2 Difficulties and keys to their solutions 39
1.3 Planning: the PIP procedure 45
1.4 Management 63
1.5 Monitoring 63
Chapter 2. From the decision-making procedure to MODSS 64
2.1 Planning and management 64
2.2 Decision making under full rationality conditions 72
2.3 Decision making under partial rationality conditions 78
2.4 Managing 87
2.5 The steady-state paradigm 87
2.6 The decision-making levels 88
2.7 Functions and architecture of a MODSS 90
2.8 Organization of the book 95
Part B: The elements of the Problem 98
Chapter 3. Actions, criteria and indicators 100
3.1 From Reconnaissance to actions 100
3.2 Criteria and indicators 105
3.3 An example: the Egyptian Water Plan 115
3.4 Project and sector indices 117
Chapter 4. Systems, models and indicators 122
4.1 From the water system to its model 122
4.2 Bayesian Belief Networks 135
4.3 Mechanistic models 138
4.4 Empirical models 140
4.5 Data-Based Mechanistic models 143
4.6 Models of the disturbances 146
4.7 Markov chains 149
4.8 The time step 151
4.9 The modelling process 153
4.10 The indicators 156
4.11 Stationary or non-stationary? 161
4.12 Realization and state estimation 162
4.13 Conclusion 163
Chapter 5. Modelling the components 164
5.1 Reservoirs 165
5.2 Catchments 179
5.3 Canals 187
5.4 Diversion dams 195
5.5 Confluence points 196
5.6 Stakeholders 197
5.7 Disturbance 210
Chapter 6. Aggregated models 212
6.1 Identification procedure 212
6.2 The global model 227
6.3 The distribution network 230
6.4 More about disturbances 234
Part C: Decision making in full rationality conditions 244
Chapter 7. Identifying the optimal alternative 246
7.1 Why the Problem is difficult 247
7.2 Organization of Part C 248
Chapter 8. Choosing among infinite alternatives 250
8.1 The elements of the Planning Problem 250
8.2 Formulating the Problem 258
8.3 Example: the Sinai Plan 262
Chapter 9. Dealing with risk and uncertainty 270
9.1 Risk and uncertainty 270
9.2 Chance constraints 275
9.3 The Pure Planning Problem under risk or uncertainty 276
9.4 Solution 278
Chapter 10. Planning the management 280
10.1 The policy 280
10.2 The elements of the Design Problem 285
10.3 The Design Problem with PV policies 292
10.4 A Law of Duality: from Laplace to Wald 298
10.5 Discretization 298
Chapter 11. The Design Problem with SV policies 304
11.1 Markov chains 304
11.2 The Design Problem with SV policies 307
11.3 Cascade criteria 311
Chapter 12. Off-line non-learning-based policies 314
12.1 PV policies: Functional Design 316
12.2 PV policies: Parametric Design 333
12.3 SV policies: Functional Design 348
Chapter 13. Off-line learning policies 350
13.1 Reinforcement Learning 351
13.2 From SDP to Q-learning 353
13.3 Model-free Q-learning 356
13.4 Partially model-free Q-learning 360
13.5 SV policies 365
Chapter 14. On-line policies 368
14.1 On-line design and reduced state 369
14.2 Adaptive policies 374
14.3 Forms of On-line Problems 376
14.4 SV policies 384
14.5 Variable-frequency regulation 384
Chapter 15. Distribution policies 388
15.1 Control Problem for distribution policies 390
15.2 Solution algorithms 394
Part D: Decision making in partial rationality conditions 398
Chapter 16. The decision-making process 400
16.1 Multiple objectives: from Designing Alternatives to Evaluation 402
16.2 Multiple Decision Makers: Comparison and Final Decision 403
16.3 Mitigation and Compensation 403
16.4 Organization of Part D 404
Chapter 17. Choosing the decision-making method 406
17.1 Rankings and ordinal scales 406
17.2 Preference axioms 411
17.3 Multi-Attribute Value Theory 412
17.4 Analytic Hierarchy Process 413
17.5 ELECTRE methods 416
17.6 Choice of the method 418
Chapter 18. Identifying efficient alternatives 422
18.1 Multi-Objective Design Problems 422
18.2 Pareto Efficiency 423
18.3 Determining the Pareto-efficient decisions 426
18.4 Preferences among the objectives 438
18.5 An example: the Sinai Plan 438
18.6 Choosing the objectives 440
18.7 Discretizing the alternatives 443
Chapter 19. Estimating Effects 446
19.1 Markov simulation 447
19.2 Deterministic and Monte Carlo simulations 453
19.3 The evaluation scenario 457
19.4 Validating the indicators 458
19.5 Matrix of the Effects 459
Chapter 20. Evaluation 460
20.1 MAVT: basic assumptions 460
20.2 MAVT: utility functions and value functions 461
20.3 Mutual preferential independence 464
20.4 Identifying partial value functions 467
20.5 Excluding dominated alternatives 471
20.6 Identifying the global value function 471
20.7 Uncertainty in the Evaluation 477
20.8 Beyond MAVT 479
Chapter 21. Comparison, negotiations and the Final Decision 480
21.1 How to negotiate 481
21.2 What to negotiate 482
21.3 Step-by-step negotiations vs negotiations on rankings 485
21.4 Negotiations on weights 488
21.5 Negotiations on thresholds 491
21.6 Voting on rankings 496
21.7 Mediation suggestions 497
21.8 Organizing the meetings 505
Chapter 22. Mitigation and Compensation 506
22.1 Mitigation measures 506
22.2 Compensation measures 507
22.3 Mitigation and Compensation in the decision-making process 508
Chapter 23. How to cope with uncertainty: recapitulation 510
23.1 Decision-making problems: a classification 510
23.2 Classifying and modelling uncertainty 517
23.3 Handling uncertainty in the decision-making process 520
Part E: MODSS 526
Chapter 24. Software architecture of MODSSs 528
24.1 Requirements 529
24.2 Design 535
24.3 Architecture 541
24.4 Some prospects on distributed architectures 549
24.5 Conclusion 551
References 554
Index 574

Textauszug

Introduction

Rodolfo Soncini-Sessa

DEI–Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

E-mail address: [e-mail]

Rodolfo Soncini-Sessa

E-mail address: [e-mail]

Take care of the earth and the water: they were not given to us by our fathers, but loaned to us by our children.

A nomadic shepherd's saying from Kenya

The issue of water

It will be water that shapes the new century, just as petroleum shaped the one that has just passed. Over the last century the population of the planet has tripled, while water consumption has increased by six or seven times. Consumption of water has increased at double the rate of the population, and as a consequence 30% of humanity does not have sufficient water and each year 7 million people die from diseases caused by polluted water. The forecasts are that in 2025 the world population will be about 8 billion and that the fraction with water scarcity will rise to 50% (Rosegrant et al., 2002). The deficit will be particularly severe in Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa, that is in those very countries that are today among the poorest in the world, but will occur also in regions that today are neither arid or even semi-arid.

In developing countries, where agriculture is an important component of the economy, irrigation uses from 75 to 90% of the fresh water derived from rivers or pumped from aquifers, but also in developed countries, where agriculture employs less than 5% of the inhabitants, agricultural water consumption is still very high, between 50 and 65% of the total. This means that the competition for water between agriculture and the other sectors is very high and destined to increase with population growth (Bonell and Askew, 2000).

It is predicted that the expansion of water demand will produce, each year, in the most critical months, the drying up of many rivers before they reach the mouth. The phenomenon is not new, however. Already, in the summer of 1972, the Huang Ho (Yellow River) ran completely dry for a few weeks close to its mouth (Brown et al., 1998). This phenomenon was repeated occasionally in the following years, but from 1985 it has occurred regularly every year. In 1997 the mouth of the river was dry for 226 days and for many months the river flow did not even reach Shandong, the last province that the river crosses on its journey to the sea. This is not the only case. The Colorado River rarely reaches the Gulf of California, because its waters are totally withdrawn to satisfy Arizona's thirst, and above all California's. The water volume that the Nile dumps into the Mediterranean is negligible by now, just like the volume that the Ganges brings to Gulf of Bengal (Brown, 2001).

For poor countries, to be able to have enough safe water is an essential condition for getting out of poverty. In rich countries the recovery of the water quality in rivers and lakes, which has been sacrificed in the past to economic progress, is an essential condition for improving the quality of life. But to improve the quality and quantity of water available for human and environmental aims is a difficult task, since these objectives are often in conflict with each other. To increase availability, consumption can be rationalized (the volume of water dumped each time that a westerner uses the toilet is the volume that the average inhabitant of the third world uses in a day to drink, wash him/herself, wash, and cook) or the exploitation of the resource can be made more efficient.

In both cases the growing demand will increase the competition among water users at local, national and international levels. Ismail Serageldin, at the time vice-president of the World Bank and chairman of the Global Water Partnership, has declared more than once, and in no uncertain terms, that the wars of the XXI century will be fought over water (Homer-Dixon, 1996). He has been criticized a great deal for his thesis, but just as many have supported it (Starr, 1991; Bulloch and Darwish, 1993; Ohlsson, 1995). In 2003, at the Third World Water Forum, Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), in presenting the Atlas of International Freshwater Agreements (Wolf, 2002b) indirectly confirmed this thesis. The work he revealed shows the need to monitor, to adopt scientific rigor and diplomatic energy to assure that cooperation between the states be maintained and extended. Although 3000 treaties and agreements have been signed in the last century in 100 transnational river basins, another 158 are still without one. These river basins collect 60% of the world's fresh water and host 40% of the population, and their number increases with political instability. The dissolution of the USSR, for example, made the Dnieper, the Don and the Volga international, and the Lake Aral river basin, in Central Asia, was left divided between five ex-Soviet republics. Tensions rose very quickly between these young nations over the sharing out of the waters of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, the two rivers that feed the lake and over the interventions aimed at improving the environmental and human disaster produced by its drying out (see Figure 1), which was the result of 40 years of massive derivations from these rivers to cultivate cotton in the deserts of Central Asia.

Figure 1 The progressive drying out of Lake Aral.

Until 1950 only one war generated by a dispute over water had been recorded, but in the following fifty years one quarter of such disputes have been hostile. This is a clear sign of growing tensions. In most cases the hostilities do not go beyond the verbal level, but unresolved tensions over water have nevertheless exacerbated relations and fuelled other reasons for hostility. In 37 cases military action has been taken, mostly limited to the destruction of dams. Almost all of these conflicts have developed in the same way: the construction of a big dam or a big project has created a prolonged period of regional instability and hostility, followed by a long and difficult process of dispute resolution (Postel and Wolf, 2001).

Competition is clearly not limited to nations, but arises also within them, between regions and economic sectors. Throughout the world, agriculture, cities, industry and environment compete for water and this competition affects in turn the relationships between political entities (cities and provinces) and their neighbours. For example, in Pakistan there is currently a bitter conflict between the regions of the Punjab and the Sind for the water of the lower Indus; and in Thailand between the north and the south of the country for the Chao Phraya, which feeds Bangkok. To satisfy the thirsty cities, water is often taken from agriculture. Sometimes, the farmers, who can no longer irrigate, react violently, as happened in 2000 in Shandong, when thousands entered into a bloody conflict with the police to block repairs to a large dam on the Huang Ho, whose leakage they had been using for some time to irrigate their fields. But even when it does not come to conflicts, the consequences are not the best because the farmers abandon the fields and go to increase the numbers of the unemployed masses in the overflowing and thirsty cities. This has happened in Pakistan, where the crisis of irrigated agriculture has produced an enormous emigration to the big cities, which in turn has led to repeated explosions of ethnic violence.

What can be done?

Unfortunately water cannot be produced in significant volumes within acceptable costs. The quantity of fresh water available is essentially invariable in time, which means that today, to satisfy 6 billion people, we have the same amount of annual flow (nearly 34 000 billion cubic metres per year) that was available 4000 years ago, when, in China and in Mesopotamia, the first great irrigation empires were formed and the population of the planet did not exceed 100 million inhabitants.

If we cannot increase the overall flow, we could try to increase the fraction of it that we use; however, this also is a blind alley, as today we capture little more than half (about 54%), and the residual is very difficult to acquire.

The possibility remains to reallocate the resource, both in space and time. To achieve this we need canals and reservoirs. In the last half century, the creation of these structures has proceeded at a frenetic pace. While in 1950 there were only 5000 ‘large sized’1 reservoirs in the world, in 1994 there were more than 38 000 and together they intercepted 16% of the total flow of the rivers on the planet, with very significant economic and environmental effects (Silvester et al., 2000). It is not possible to construct a significantly greater number of dams, also because the marginal yield of the investment decreases rapidly, given that the best sites have already been used.2

Only one possibility remains: manage the water that we already have better. In other words, the conflicts will have to be resolved by moving the resource between bordering regions or between economic sectors. But, to avoid producing new conflicts, it must be done only with the agreement of the interested parties, in a collaborative way. Some have already begun to pioneer this way. The municipalities of some big cities that are particularly thirsty, such as for example Los Angeles and Beijing, subsidize the reduction of leaks in the irrigation system in peripheral agricultural areas, in exchange for the water...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.10.2007
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Hydrologie / Ozeanografie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Umwelttechnik / Biotechnologie
• ISBN-10: 0-08-055141-6 / 0080551416
• ISBN-13: 978-0-08-055141-8 / 9780080551418