1st International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software - Lugano, Switzerland - June 2002
Keywords
seine river, modelling, backcasting, prospective, future research
Start Date
1-7-2002 12:00 AM
Abstract
For years policy makers and researchers involved in the management of the Seine river basin haveshared a common representation of the system's structure and behaviour: Paris, in the centre, divides thewatershed into two very unequal parts, a "clean" upstream and the downstream where environmentalproblems occur due to Paris sewage. This representation resulted in both (1) a focus of the attention and theefforts of policy makers on the downstream area and (2) the structuring of scientific research on the SeineRiver in a very dissymmetric way, including the features of the models developed within the 12-year old andstill ongoing research programme dedicated to the area. Hence, we were led to attempt studying theconsequences of changing the watershed's spatial segmentation by considering a hypothetical future state ofthe river basin in which the city of Paris would be suffering from sewage discharged upstream. Exploringsuch "surprise-based scenario" using a "backcasting" approach raised both methodological issues of couplingstructural changes in socio-economic scenarios with existing bio-geo-chemical models and some interestinglessons on the watershed behaviour: a strong resilience of the river basin, the weak feedback of water qualityon the socio-economic dynamic (i.e. environmental considerations have little influence on the basin'sevolution), and a new illustration of the absence of significant stakes related to the quantitative managementof water.
Integrating structural changes in future research and modelling on the Seine River Basin
For years policy makers and researchers involved in the management of the Seine river basin haveshared a common representation of the system's structure and behaviour: Paris, in the centre, divides thewatershed into two very unequal parts, a "clean" upstream and the downstream where environmentalproblems occur due to Paris sewage. This representation resulted in both (1) a focus of the attention and theefforts of policy makers on the downstream area and (2) the structuring of scientific research on the SeineRiver in a very dissymmetric way, including the features of the models developed within the 12-year old andstill ongoing research programme dedicated to the area. Hence, we were led to attempt studying theconsequences of changing the watershed's spatial segmentation by considering a hypothetical future state ofthe river basin in which the city of Paris would be suffering from sewage discharged upstream. Exploringsuch "surprise-based scenario" using a "backcasting" approach raised both methodological issues of couplingstructural changes in socio-economic scenarios with existing bio-geo-chemical models and some interestinglessons on the watershed behaviour: a strong resilience of the river basin, the weak feedback of water qualityon the socio-economic dynamic (i.e. environmental considerations have little influence on the basin'sevolution), and a new illustration of the absence of significant stakes related to the quantitative managementof water.
