Keywords: OPTIMA, sustainable water management, multi-criteria optimisation, genetic programming, dynamic simulation, scenarios, decision support.

River basins in most of the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean countries suffer from water scarcity due to rapid demographic and economic development particularly in the coastal zone, urbanization, industrialization, tourism, and an often inefficient agricultural sector as the dominant water user. The Gediz River Basin along the Aegean coast of Turkey is a typical case where two major problems, water scarcity and pollution, need to be addressed for sustainable management of its water resources. The basin covers about 18,000 km² and approaches a total population of two million. The case demonstrates the entire range of prototypical water management problems in the region, and their potential solutions. The existing water resources are under pressure by rapid industrial development, population growth, related increases in agricultural production, and pollution. To provide water for different sectors, to maintain the sustainable development of the region and to assess the long-term impacts of water policies, domestic, industrial, irrigational, and environmental water demands should be evaluated in terms of existing trends and possible future tendencies in water use. The case also reflects the importance of the institutional and regulatory framework, and the need for direct participation of major actors and stakeholders in the planning and decision making processes. A common shared and reliable information basis is a central element of the participatory approach.

The case is studied within the scope of the EU INCO project, OPTIMA (Optimisation for Sustainable Water Management) sponsored by EU FP6 Programme [1]. The project uses a simulation based water resources planning and optimisation system to address water quantity and quality, water demand and supply, surface and groundwater, water technologies and efficiency of use, allocation strategies, costs and benefits. A web-based client-server implementation supports distributed use and easy access, and a participatory approach involving local stake holders for multi-criteria optimisation and decision support. An annual water budget simulation model called WaterWare (provided by Environmental Software Systems-ESS, Austria) is used to determine the performance of the existing river network system in terms of the available water. The analysis is mainly based on comparison of alternative water management scenarios.

The optimisation uses heuristics and concepts of genetic programming, based on a realistic, detailed, dynamic and distributed representation of the river basin. The underlying dynamic (daily) simulation model describes the water resources systems at a basin scale including the groundwater system for conjunctive use. The model covers the physiographic and hydrological elements, but also aims to represent the institutional and regulatory framework, and the socio-economic driving forces. The primary optimisation identifies sets of non-dominated pareto-optimal solutions in heavily constrained scenarios; these are the basis for an interactive discrete multi-criteria selection with the participation of end users. The multi-criteria approach covers global and sectoral demand and supply balances, reliability of supply, access, cost and benefits, including environmental and social aspects. Arbitrary penalty functions can be used for the valuation of violation of standards and missing targets, both shortfalls of supply as well as excess (flooding or pollution) [2,3].

In this paper, a brief introduction to the OPTIMA project and its basic approach and tools is presented, followed by a description of the case study basin, i.e., the Gediz River Basin in Turkey [4]. The current status of the case study presented includes the simulation model runs for two baseline scenarios relating to a wet and a dry year. The annual water budget for the scenarios is then elaborated with an economic assessment procedure to determine the economic parameters for the business-as-usual case. This initial phase of the optimisation procedure comprises the statement of objectives, criteria and instruments for basin management. The next step of the project will focus on the development of future scenarios based on the "instruments" specified by Gediz stakeholders. Once these scenarios are set up and assessed for their economic parameters, it will be possible to select the "optimum" management plan among a number of alternatives.

1

http://www.ess.co.at/OPTIMA

2

K. Fedra, N.B. Harmancioglu, "A Web-Based Water Resources Simulation and Optimisation System", in "Proceeding of CCWI 2005 on Water Management for the 21st Century", D. Savic, G. Walters, R. King and A-T. Khu (Editors), Center of Water Systems, University of Exeter, Volume II, 167-172, 2005.

3

http://www.ess.co.at/WATERWARE

4

M. Svendsen, H. Murray-Rust, N.B. Harmancioglu, N. Alpaslan, "Governing Closing Basins: the Case of the Gediz River in Turkey", in: "Irrigation and River Basin Management, Options for Governance and Institutions", M. Svendsen (Editor), CABI Publishing, ch.11, pp. 193-213, 2005.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £105 +P&P)