Trading‐off tolerable risk with climate change adaptation costs in water supply systems

Choosing secure water resource management plans inevitably requires trade‐offs between risks (for a variety of stakeholders), costs, and other impacts. We have previously argued that water resources planning should focus upon metrics of risk of water restrictions, accompanied by extensive simulation...

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Published in:Water resources research Vol. 52; no. 2; pp. 622 - 643
Main Authors: Borgomeo, Edoardo, Mortazavi‐Naeini, Mohammad, Hall, Jim W., O'Sullivan, Michael J., Watson, Tim
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Washington John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.02.2016
Subjects:
Climate adaptation
Climate change
climate change adaptation
Climate models
Costs
decision‐making
London
Optimization
Pareto optimum
Planning
tolerable risk
Water conveyance
Water resources
Water resources management
Water shortages
Water supply
Water use
British Isles, England, Greater London, London
ISSN:0043-1397, 1944-7973
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Choosing secure water resource management plans inevitably requires trade‐offs between risks (for a variety of stakeholders), costs, and other impacts. We have previously argued that water resources planning should focus upon metrics of risk of water restrictions, accompanied by extensive simulation and scenario‐based exploration of uncertainty. However, the results of optimization subject to risk constraints can be sensitive to the specification of tolerable risk, which may not be precisely or consistently defined by different stakeholders. In this paper, we recast the water resources planning problem as a multiobjective optimization problem to identify least cost schemes that satisfy a set of criteria for tolerable risk, where tolerable risk is defined in terms of the frequency of water use restrictions of different levels of severity. Our proposed method links a very large ensemble of climate model projections to a water resource system model and a multiobjective optimization algorithm to identify a Pareto optimal set of water resource management plans across a 25 years planning period. In a case study application to the London water supply system, we identify water resources management plans that, for a given financial cost, maximize performance with respect to one or more probabilistic criteria. This illustrates trade‐offs between financial costs of plans and risk, and between risk criteria for four different severities of water use restrictions. Graphical representation of alternative sequences of investments in the Pareto set helps to identify water management options for which there is a robust case for including them in the plan. Key Points: Estimated the probability of water restrictions under nonstationary climate Identified water plans that meet tolerable risk criteria Demonstrated sensitivity of plans to risk criteria and model uncertainties
Bibliography:This article was corrected on 2 NOV 2016. See the end of the full text for details.
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ISSN:0043-1397
1944-7973
DOI:10.1002/2015WR018164