Keywords
Water shortage, Vulnerability, Drought, Nonstationary, Climate change
Start Date
25-6-2018 10:40 AM
End Date
25-6-2018 12:00 PM
Abstract
Climatic changes combined with land use change and rapid population growth can increase the vulnerability to water shortage in water scarce regions. Nonstationary water supply and demand conditions pose planning and management challenges. This study presents a methodology to assess water shortage vulnerability at the municipal level under nonstationary conditions. The City of Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S., was used as the test bed for demonstration of the framework. Water shortage and drought characteristics were explored by simulating responses from a coupled process-based modeling system with bias-corrected climate data and water use scenarios. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool model was used to simulate the hydrologic response of the City water supply watershed under climate change scenarios. Similarly, water demand for the municipal region was estimated using the Integrated Urban Water Model. The future climate data were obtained from the CMIP5 dataset, and subsequently downscaled for meteorological stations in the region using the Quantile Mapping technique combined with a rigorous temporal (i.e. monthly to daily) downscaling approach. Vulnerability to water shortage and resiliency of the water system were then evaluated as a function of the frequency of water demand exceeding water supply. Changes in drought characteristics – i.e. duration and intensity from current conditions (1986-2015) to mid-century conditions (2035-2064) were examined. The proposed framework can be used to assess alternative mitigation and adaptation strategies to improve the resiliency of municipal water supply systems under uncertainty.
An Analytical Framework for Assessing Water Shortage Vulnerability under Nonstationary Supply and Demand Conditions
Climatic changes combined with land use change and rapid population growth can increase the vulnerability to water shortage in water scarce regions. Nonstationary water supply and demand conditions pose planning and management challenges. This study presents a methodology to assess water shortage vulnerability at the municipal level under nonstationary conditions. The City of Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S., was used as the test bed for demonstration of the framework. Water shortage and drought characteristics were explored by simulating responses from a coupled process-based modeling system with bias-corrected climate data and water use scenarios. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool model was used to simulate the hydrologic response of the City water supply watershed under climate change scenarios. Similarly, water demand for the municipal region was estimated using the Integrated Urban Water Model. The future climate data were obtained from the CMIP5 dataset, and subsequently downscaled for meteorological stations in the region using the Quantile Mapping technique combined with a rigorous temporal (i.e. monthly to daily) downscaling approach. Vulnerability to water shortage and resiliency of the water system were then evaluated as a function of the frequency of water demand exceeding water supply. Changes in drought characteristics – i.e. duration and intensity from current conditions (1986-2015) to mid-century conditions (2035-2064) were examined. The proposed framework can be used to assess alternative mitigation and adaptation strategies to improve the resiliency of municipal water supply systems under uncertainty.
Stream and Session
C12: Connecting Environment, Technology, and Society: Integrated Decision Support Tools for System-Level Analysis