The Confluence of a Career: Virtual Droughts, Shared-Vision Planning, and Climate Change

This lecture was given by Richard Palmer after receiving the 2006 Julian Hinds Award.

First, let me thank Bill Werick for his much too kind introduction. Bill is given to exaggeration. Second, I want to express to you the pride I feel having been selected to receive the 2006 Julian Hinds Award. In the past the award has been given to many very outstanding individuals, and it is not clear that I deserve membership in that club. I can only note my incredible luck in being surrounded by exceptionally talented mentors, colleagues, and graduate students during the past $30\text{years}$ . These people shared their time and intellect with me, encouraged me to continue when I was on the right track and redirected me when I wasn’t. This award is certainly due to the opportunities these people have helped me recognize.

My talk this morning conveys three themes that have figured significantly in my professional activities during the past $30\text{years}$ : interactive, computer-aided decision making, shared vision planning and global climate change. But, before beginning my talk, I want to acknowledge three institutions. The Johns Hopkins University is where I was given the opportunity to perform my graduate work in water resources and where I met so many outstanding people, including Abel Wolman, Reds Wolman, Jared Cohon, Charles ReVelle, Robert Hirsch, Kenneth Potter, James Smith, and David Eaton; The Institute of Water Resources of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, specifically, Bill Werick and Gene Stakhiv who provided me with both support and guidance for many years; and the University of Washington that has been my home institution for the past $27\text{years}$ and where I have been trained by my students and colleagues.

My three themes begin with the idea of interactive, computer-aided decision making. Some people in this room are like me, their careers began when “computers and computing” implied a deck of key punch cards and time spent waiting for your program’s error messages. When I entered graduate school my primary interest was in water supply management. With the help of Paul Eastman and Dan Sheer, I was able to interest water research agencies in northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, and Washington, D.C. to support research at The John Hopkins University to analyze supply options for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The Corps of Engineers had created a water supply plan that called for the construction of 16 reservoirs in the Potomac River to augment D.C.’s water supply. As part of my Ph.D. dissertation, I applied a linear programming model to demonstrate that conjunctive management of the existing reservoirs and the construction of two reservoirs would provide all the water needed for many years. The model’s assumptions included “cooperative management” of the system. There was nothing “interactive” about my model. I loaded a deck of computer cards into a card reader, communicated this information via slow phone lines to Minneapolis, waited for the linear program to be completed, then received the results, again by a slow phone line. In this slow process, I identified a very logical and cost-effective solution, again with the assumption that the region would be happy to cooperate in regional water management. As it turned out, this solution was not favored by any of the stakeholders, because I was unaware of the larger, ongoing planning process and had engaged few stakeholders in our study.

To address this challenge, the research team at Hopkins took the insights we had gained in the linear programming model and incorporated them into one of the early “interactive simulation” models. We demonstrated several regional options in a workshop for the “real” system operators and managers. We asked managers how they would respond to water-short situations, creating a “virtual drought” that required them to arrive at regional operating policies. We demonstrated with models that by working conjunctively, everyone’s benefits were increased. We demonstrated how the region could practice for droughts. By asking the managers to look at the benefits to the entire region, they were able to identify operations from a new perspective.

The computer models and the workshop were important steps in a long process that led to regional cooperation in managing the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area water supply system during droughts. This work was identified as one of the Civil Engineering Achievements of the Year in 1983. It demonstrated the importance of planning and management of large-scale infrastructure. It illustrated the potential value of interactive computing in supporting informed decision making. These efforts were the genesis of numerous applications of interactive-computer modeling and virtual droughts to other water supply challenges. Today, these virtual droughts are still being performed under the guidance of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, lead by Erik Hagen.

Next, the idea of shared vision planning. During the early 1990s, the Institute of Water Research (IWR) began a study of how droughts were managed in the U.S. As part of this study, five case studies were identified in which drought plans were to be created. Through a series of very fortunate accidents, I became involved in the National Drought Study and had the opportunity to work with Bill Werick in demonstrating the potential of emerging interactive computing environments to aid in the planning process. Bill Werick and Gene Stakhiv introduced me to the formal concepts contained in the Economic and Environmental Principles and Guidelines for Water and Related Land Resources (P&G). At that time I knew little about formal water “planning processes,” as I had so capably demonstrated in the early Potomac River work. In turn, I introduced Werick and Stakhiv to participatory modeling. This actually caused some concerns as Werick had no intention of building computer models of water systems as part of the National Drought Study. His experience suggested that such models were expensive and rarely completed on time, that they typically did not incorporate those system components most important in real decision making and management, and they often cost more than they provided in useful planning insights. I suggested that with the interactive, objective oriented modeling tools that were available, models could actually serve as the center of the planning process. From my perspective, the software for developing computer models that I wished for during the Potomac River work had finally arrived during the 1990s, and it was truly possible to include stakeholders in model development.

Despite the original disagreements, we found common ground. To test the value of interactive model development, Werick added collaborative model building as a task in each of the five case studies the Corps was conducting. He did not increase the study budgets or lengthen their schedules. Within $2\text{years}$ , Richard Punnett, from the Corps’ Huntington District, identified new operating rules for Corps reservoirs on the Kanawha River system in West Virginia, which were expected to yield several million dollars in recreational benefits during the next severe drought, with no losses to other sectors. It is difficult without a “control” to say whether or not collaborative modeling was responsible for identifying these benefits. But a drought study without collaborative modeling had been completed for the same system in the late 1980s and had not found the same solution nor had arrived at a consensus. That experience made Werick an enthusiastic convert. Working together with a number of excellent graduate students at the University of Washington and borrowing heavily from the P&G, we developed a simple planning process that we termed shared vision planning. We defined shared vision planning as a collaborative approach to formulating water management solutions that has three components: traditional water resources planning; integrated computer modeling; and structured public participation.

The traditional water resources planning approach required only a slight updating of concepts from the P&G. The second component was integrated computer modeling. Integrated, in this context, implied ensuring that the model included all relevant factors that were elements in the planning process. This required shared vision models to include not only the physical and hydrologic features of the system, but also the important biological, economic, and social features that were likely to impact decision making. Integrated also implied that the model contained all the alternatives, measures of performance, and a process for selecting the preferred alterative. By incorporating all of this into a model, choices became clearer, evaluations more quantifiable, and sensitivity of answers more easily explored.

The third component of shared vision planning was structured public participation. In shared vision planning, public participation does not occur only at the beginning or end of the process but is appropriately practiced throughout the process. We recognized that a computer model could be the centerpiece of the public participation process. Model construction required further engagement of the stakeholders, increasing public participation in the gathering of information used in the model. Stakeholder involvement allowed us to conduct more realistic virtual exercises, where water managers were able to simulate events in a short period of time and test different policies from personal and institutional perspectives.

The final theme of my talk is climate change. Since the early 1990s, I have had the opportunity to work on a series of research projects that evaluated the impacts of climate change. This began in the early 1990s with funding from Gene Stakhiv and the IWR, involving a number of researchers at the University of Washington and was led by Dennis Lettenmaier. Since 2000, I have been associated with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. In this work, I have been very impressed both with what we do know about climate change and what we don’t. It is possible today to list with confidence a number of facts, all of which are widely accepted by climate scientists and are beginning to be very well understood by the public. Greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are increasing dramatically. We are experiencing global warming, and the greenhouse gases are causing this warming. During the past $200\text{years}$ , the 12 warmest years (on a global scale) have occurred since 1992. All credible general circulation models (GCMs) predict that the earth is warming. The amount of anticipated global warming varies based upon predicted emission scenarios and the GCM used, but conservative estimates suggest that temperatures will increase by $1.5\mathrm{F}$ by 2020 and $3.5\mathrm{F}$ by 2040. Warming in the western U.S. will cause significant changes in the hydrology of the west, with significant decreases in snowpack, earlier spring melts, and more frequent and severe droughts. Significant decreases in maximum peak snowpack have occurred for watersheds that provide drinking water in the Pacific Northwest since 1950 (approximately 50%), and for the entire Columbia River watershed (approximately 33%). Similar decreases from today’s levels are predicted during the next $50\text{years}$ . This will have significant impacts on hydropower production and our ability to recover salmon species.

The civil engineering profession has an obligation to understand the causes of global warming and to take a leadership role in mitigating and adapting to future changes. Professionally, we would be foolish and irresponsible not to identify the impacts that climate change will have on water supply, water demand, water quality, flooding, and other national infrastructure needs. A significant challenge to our profession is how best to incorporate our understanding of the changes that we are experiencing into appropriate design codes so that we are prepared for the future. In addition, our profession must strive to provide a clear vision of the potential impacts of climate change to both our professional community and to the general public.

In closing, I want to once again thank the many members of ASCE that have been friends and colleagues over the years for this honor. Many of you have meant more to me at various times in my career than you know. I want to close with a thank-you to my students who have inspired me by their enthusiasm and commitment and whose intelligence and resourcefulness have often been mistaken for my own.