Robust Water-Management Strategies for the California Water Plan Update 2013: Proof-of-Concept Analysis

David G. Groves ; Evan Bloom

RAND Corporation

RAND Corporation

关键词: California;    Alumni;    Global Climate Change;    Water Resources Management;    Robust Decision Making;    Students;   

DOI  :  10.7249/RR182
RP-ID  :  RR-182-DWR

学科分类：自然科学（综合）

美国|英语

来源: RAND Corporation Published Research

【 摘 要 】

California faces significant challenges in ensuring that its water resources successfully meet diverse needs across the state in the coming decades. Increasing needs due to population and economic growth, increasing agricultural irrigation requirements, and growing desires to dedicate more water to the environment will strain a system nearing or exceeding capacity. These challenges are exacerbated by potential declines in available water supply due to natural variability and climatic changes. How these long-term changes will unfold and affect California's water system is highly uncertain. Addressing the future uncertainty and diversity of needs requires a planning approach that is flexible and can support deliberations for different approaches, rather than a single prescription for how to move forward. The California Department of Water Resources' (DWR's) California Water Plan Update 2013 will describe current water management conditions, evaluate future challenges facing the California water sector, and discuss potential solutions. A technical analysis of water management response packages will also be developed. This report describes a proof-of-concept analysis using Robust Decision Making to evaluate water resource management response packages for California's Central Valley (the Sacramento River, San Joaquin River, and Tulare Lake hydrologic regions) under future uncertainty using models developed within the Water Evaluation And Planning environment. This analytic approach will be used to develop a more comprehensive analysis for the California Water Plan Update 2013. The analysis described in this report was presented to DWR's Statewide Water Analysis Network in May 2011.