Development of an Algorithm for Risk Based Strategic Water Supply Planning: A Case Study

The importance of a safe and reliable source of water is beyond question as a basic necessity of life. At the present time, water usages are normally included in agricultural, industrial, household, recreational and environmental activities. Dams/water supply reservoirs as an important parts of the water resource system have always been threatened by natural and manmade hazards. Therefore, due to the high vulnerability of dams' failure, it is necessary to use risk management methods in water resource management and planning. In this paper, a strategic planning scheme is used as a risk management approach and DPSIR methodology is applied to find the relation between different factors of the system and the most effective strategies. In the proposed methodology, risk based strategic planning is used for determining strategies and action plans for reliable water supply reservoir. The results show a paradigm shift is needed for a reliable supply of demands and replacing central water resources storage dams with high environmental, natural and accidental risk by distributed small water supply resources with low risks and environmental impacts. One of the important issues which should be considered in strategic planning is water quality as a state of the DPSIR (Driving force, Pressure, State, Impact, and Response) model.