Water Engineering

Corentin Girard, researcher at the Research Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA, in its Spanish acronym) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (IIAMA-UPV), with the help of his thesis directors -IIAMA-UPV's Deputy Director, Manuel Pulido, and French economist Jean-Daniel Rinaudo, of the French Geological Service (BRGM)- has developed an innovative method to assist planning at basin scale in periods of uncertainty such as, for example, the once caused by climate change.

The paper, published in Global Environmental Change, is the result of a research project funded by the BRGM and the French National Agency for Water and Aquatic Environment (ONEMA), which seeks methods for selecting action-oriented measures against climate change from economic and environmental principles.

Evaluation of all options before undertaking expensive projects

Through an optimisation model, the system chooses the best combination of actions depending on the nature of the basin, as well as the projections of changes in demand, the cost-effectiveness of possible actions and different plausible climate change scenarios.

This way, the model enhances the advantages of the measures designed to improve the efficiency of irrigation channels for agriculture or drinking water networks to be able to challenge an uncertain future.

As Girard argues, "It is necessary to evaluate the whole spectrum of possibilities before carrying out works that require greater investment, such as building desalination plants or performing water transfers, in order to avoid regretting the decision later on."

The ultimate goal: ensuring water supply to all users

The project aims to ensure long-term water supply to all users, maintaining a balance between resources, demand and the impact of the measures implemented in each section.

In order to this, Girard points out that various adaptation programmes have been evaluated against different scenarios "defining one with lower cost measures, and robust against the impact of climate change."

Methodology

This way, the methodology developed allows investigating trade-offs between different planning objectives: ecological flows, irrigation development, guaranteed supply for urban demand, and the cost of the action programme.

Similarly, the interdisciplinary framework developed integrates a top-down perspective in an innovative way, in which the different possibilities of the evolution of global climate, and its impacts on the basin at the local level, are measured with a bottom-up approach which allows to determine various scenarios of water demand and local adaptation measures, defined together with users of the basin through participatory workshops.

Case Study: the Orb river basin

The work is based on the study of the Orb river basin, which flows into the Mediterranean watershed, specifically through the town of Valras-Plage, located between Montpellier and Perpignan.

Several studies agree that the regions around the Mediterranean Sea will be significantly impacted by climate change, although there is no agreement on the severity of the same, thus being necessary to plan action-oriented measures "given that the future is uncertain", the IIAMA-UPV researcher warns.

Participation of the different industry stakeholders in the decision-making process

One of the main contributions of Girard's model is the participation of different water industry stakeholders in the decision-making process. "It is interesting to build consensus on the proposals of irrigators, water companies, governments and people living in the basin area. Everyone has something to say", the researcher states, who believes the pilot case has been very helpful.

"The manager of the basin around the Orb river," Girard explains, "told me that there is increasing talk about climate change, but that they still do not know how to face this problem and its complexities, so we have provided them with a tool to enable them to discuss the future in order to prepare in the best way possible and to continue living in their region."

In this regard, the French researcher points out that, when measures are agreed with the different agents, "you have to make sure that there is no social conflict. You may design an excellent plan, but it just may be the case that no one is willing to implement it".

Ultimately, adaptation to global change is a challenge to conventional water resources planning and management approaches. For the time being, this model study is an innovative contribution to the arduous task of combating the new environmental challenges society faces.

Implementation in the Júcar river

For their part, the research group on Hydro-Economic Models of the Water Resources Engineering area of IIAMA-UPV, coordinated by Professor Pulido, is working on the development of methods and systems for decision-making and support for integrated, sustainable and efficient management of water resources, combining in an innovative way economics, systems analysis, hydrology, modelling of agents and public participation.

Therefore, the IIAMA-UPV is developing a methodology in the Júcar river similar to that used in the basin of the Orb river for the adaptation to climate change as part of a national multidisciplinary research project coordinated by the UPV, called IMPADAPT (Methodologies and tools for analysing impacts and adaptation to global change on water resource systems).

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