Water Transfer Analysis in the São Francisco River Basin with Mathematical Simulation Planning Tool

Water systems are developed by users with multiple, diverse and often conflicting interests. While the study and development of systems analysis approaches to support operational and water policy decisions is not new in Brazil, stakeholders still lack transparent, flexible and accessible analysis tools to improve decision-making capability in watershed management. The Sao Francisco River basin in Brazil is a large, 640,000 km² watershed with a highly diverse environment in the climate, biodiversity, water availability, water uses and economic development. A wide range of solutions have been proposed and studied to address the watershed main environmental and economic problems, being a major water transfer project one of the currently highlighted ones. This water transfer project has been subject of intense political and technical debate, where local stakeholders, organized as river basin committees, could benefit from improved analysis capability to evaluate and compare alternative water projects and policy solutions based on systematic, quantitative approaches. This work presents the application of the decision support tool WEAP to simulate water transfers scenarios in the Sao Francisco River basin (Brazil) and provide local stakeholders with shared vision planning exercise aimed at building consensus on the watershed problems. Results evaluate the impact of severe drought and water transfers on surface and groundwater operations, indicating that the system is capable of adjusting for some of the changes, however demanding improved coordination and collaboration to integrate water operations throughout the watershed.