Economic Value of Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Water Management in Spain’s Jucar Basin
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143, Issue 5
Abstract
Although many recent studies have quantified the potential effects of climate change on water resource systems, the scientific community faces now the challenge of developing methods for assessing and selecting climate change adaptation options. This paper presents a method for assessing impacts and adaptation strategies to global change in a river basin system at different temporal horizons using a hydro-economic model. First, a multiobjective analysis selects climate change projections based on the fitting of the climate models to the historical conditions for the historical period. Inflows for climate change scenarios are generated using calibrated rainfall-runoff models, perturbing observed meteorological time series according to the projected anomalies in mean and standard deviation. Demands are projected for the different scenarios and characterized using economic demand curves. With the new water resource and demand scenarios, the impact of global change on system performance is assessed using a hydro-economic model with reliability and economic indices. A new economic loss index is defined to assess the economic equity of the system. Selected adaptation strategies are simulated to compare performance with the business-as-usual scenario. The approach is applied to the Jucar River water resource system, in eastern Spain, using climate projections from the European Union (EU) ENSEMBLES project. Results show that the system is vulnerable to global change, especially over the long term, and that adaptation actions can save .
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Acknowledgments
This research was partially supported by the IMPADAPT project (CGL2013-48424-C2-1-R and CGL2013-48424-C2-2-R) of the National Research Plan (Plan Estatal I+D+I 2013-2016), funded by the Spanish Ministry MINECO (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) and European Federation funds. It was also partially funded by the PMAFI06/14 project (UCAM). The work was also partially supported by a stay grant from the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Commission under the Transatlantic Partnership for Excellence in Engineering—TEE Project. The authors would like to thank Professor Jay R. Lund (University of California, Davis) for his insights. The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (Contract Number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The data can be downloaded from http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com/.
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Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143 • Issue 5 • May 2017
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©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 14, 2015
Accepted: Sep 6, 2016
Published online: Jan 31, 2017
Published in print: May 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jun 30, 2017
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