A procedure for the quantitative assessment of water resources management under climate change and the design of adaptation measures

Anghileri, D., Pianosi, F., Soncini-Sessa, R. and Weber, E. (2010) A procedure for the quantitative assessment of water resources management under climate change and the design of adaptation measures. In Modelling for Environment's Sake: Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Conference of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, iEMSs 2010. vol. 3, International Environmental Modelling and Software Society. pp. 2166-2173 .

Abstract

The pressure on water resources has tremendously increased in the last decades and water stress is expected to further augment in many part of the world due to multiple social, economic and climatic factors. Climate change (CC) will play a key role in determining water availability especially in those countries where other drivers like population growth or economic conditions are rather stable. A huge research effort is undergoing to better understand how CC may affect the hydrological cycle. In this paper, we propose and apply a procedure on the basin of lake Como, Italy, to assess the impact of CC on water-related activities. Traditionally, this is done combining model-based approaches (e.g. downscaling of GCM outputs coupled with hydrological models to obtain future discharge scenarios) and qualitative evaluations (e.g. visual inspection of simulated discharges). In the proposed procedure, quantitative assessment is extended from hydrological variables to the impact on human activities via simulation of the entire water system and evaluation of the impacts on flooding, agriculture, ecosystems, etc. through performance indicators. As this procedure allows for a quantitative, transparent evaluation of different management policies under CC scenarios, it also opens the way to a rigorous design of adaptation measures taking into considerations future discharge scenarios on the one hand and Stakeholders' needs on the other.

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Contributors

Author: D. Anghileri

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