Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management

Recent water crises showed that excluding community stakeholders in urban water system decision-making throughout can have an adverse effect on the entire community and decrease system resilience. Although engineering managers value input from stakeholders (any group or individual that can impact or is influenced by an organization’s decisions), community engagement historically has been limited. This study examined the impact of including community stakeholders in decision-making by developing the participatory implementable engineering (PIE) index to quantify stakeholder engagement for engineering managers. In addition, the PIE model was applied to a number of case study cities for validation. The case studies validated the early engagement of community stakeholders in project decision-making as contributing to increased system resilience and decreasing the likelihood of system disruptions and/or jeopardized water quality. A scaffolding is proposed to quantify stakeholder engagement and show that targeted stakeholder engagement can be used for improved engineering decision-making.

Water distribution is an essential service provided in cities. To ensure that the public has access to high quality drinking water in sufficient quantity at all times, intervention programs must be determined to replace deteriorated objects in the network. These intervention programs have costs, cause temporary service interruptions, and impact traffic. Optimal intervention programs must be developed and the financial requirements of these programs must be communicated and justified to stakeholders. This is a difficult task at the scale of modern cities due to the extent of large water distribution networks, the variety of objects that must be considered, the number of constraints (i.e., financial and operational) that must be respected, the high level of uncertainty surrounding relevant data, and the reliance on nonformalized expert knowledge of utility workers for decision-making. In this paper, a novel methodology for determining intervention programs for an example water distribution network is presented. The approach is best suited to short-term intervention planning, is based on the existing network structure and components, and is reliant on the intervention strategies defined by the water utility. The methodology allows infrastructure managers to incorporate the expert knowledge of utility workers into the decision-making process, estimate the costs and benefits of executing preventive interventions on all objects (i.e., pipes and objects housed in facilities), and consider budget constraints. Intervention programs for a 5-year planning period for different budget scenarios are shown.

Planned potable water reuse has the potential to improve the sustainability and reliability of water supplies, but implementation has faced public acceptance challenges. Although the US Department of the Interior has predicted that hot spots of conflict over water are highly likely in the arid inland western US, significant knowledge gaps exist regarding public perceptions of potable reuse and understanding of water-related topics in this context. This study aims to fill these gaps with a large-scale ($n=\mathrm{1,831}$) survey in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to determine public acceptance of two types of potable reuse and collect data on the population’s climate and water-related knowledge, water use at home, level of trust in institutions, and demographics. The survey was developed and refined through a series of community focus groups and debriefing sessions, and the response rate was 46%. This population had higher overall levels of acceptance of potable reuse and awareness of water scarcity-related issues compared with coastal populations from other studies, with implications for design of education and outreach programming.

Demographic and contextual factors have been shown to influence acceptance of water reuse but have not been adequately studied in an arid inland context. The authors conducted a survey of 4,000 water utility customers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ($\mathrm{response}\mathrm{rate}=46\%$) on acceptance of two potable reuse scenarios, trust in institutions, water scarcity–related topics, and demographic information. Using ordered logistic regression models, the predictive power of demographic factors on acceptance of direct potable reuse (DPR) and indirect potable reuse (IPR) was investigated. It is demonstrated that demographic data can be used to predict probabilities of potable reuse acceptance with reasonable accuracy. Chi-square tests of independence were then used to further examine the relationships among less-accepting demographic groups and their levels of trust in institutions, prior awareness of potable reuse, and knowledge of water scarcity in the region. This study intends to fill knowledge gaps related to arid inland perspectives on potable water reuse and related topics, and proposes an approach to enable creation of inclusive public dialogue and design of tailored education and outreach programming.

In recent years, power generation has been coupled with pressure regulation to optimize management of water distribution networks, also showing attractive revenues and short payback periods. A recent study proposed a prototype that performs both electric and hydraulic regulation for pressure regulation and hydropower generation in a water distribution network, wherein laboratory experiments showed the effectiveness of the control algorithms and the prototype’s capability in regulating pressure at the desired set-point value while optimizing power production. However, the prototype uses needle valves for flow and pressure regulation, whereas hydraulically operated pressure-reducing valves (PRVs) can be more effective for pressure regulation. Moreover, such PRVs require much less power for operation, thus proving more reliable in case of electrical blackout. Consequently, a different prototype was proposed, which uses hydraulically operated PRVs instead of needle valves. This paper discusses the control algorithm of the system to achieve pressure regulation and optimal power generation. A proportional integral controller was used for PRV control, whereas the inverter control was performed by means of both an external optimization module and dimensionless variables. Laboratory experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach and pointed out the effect of the gains on the process dynamics.

This paper investigates the use of surrogate measures as potential substitutes for reliability in multiobjective design of water distribution networks (WDNs). Assessing WDN reliability with conventional hydraulic and mechanical reliability metrics may require substantial computational time and resources, which becomes more critical as the network size increases. Although the reliability surrogate measures (RSMs) such as entropy, resiliency, and network resilience may have computational benefits, they may perform differently under varying cases of hydraulic and mechanical failures. To account for both the reliabilities, this study proposed two indices that weight a combination of entropy and resiliency (CERI), and entropy and network resilience (CENRI) apart from the individual measures, and then assessed their performance via multiobjective design for three benchmark WDNs and also for a case study in India. The study adopted the EPANET 2 hydraulic simulator for extended period simulation (EPS) and nondominated sorting genetic algorithm- II (NSGA-II) for the multiobjective optimization of WDNs with maximization of RSMs (one at a time) and minimization of cost as two objectives. Hydraulic and mechanical reliabilities are estimated for the generated Pareto-optimal solutions to determine the association between each RSM and hydraulic/mechanical reliability. The numerical results of the study show that the proposed RSMs can serve as effective surrogate measures to account for hydraulic and mechanical reliability in the design of WDNs. The study recommends the use of CERI as a potential substitute for traditional hydraulic and mechanical reliability metrics to speed up the reliability computation and ensure reliable water supply for both branched and looped WDNs.

Chronic and acute coastal flood risks in Miami-Dade County are assessed over the range of sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios for the coming decades. The HAZUS-MH coastal flood hazard modeling and loss estimation tool are used to determine flood extent and depth and corresponding monetary losses to buildings associated with different sea water levels (SWLs). The frequency of SWLs is estimated using a nonstationary mixture normal-generalized Pareto distribution under current condition and future SLR scenarios. Also, the least adaptation level to cope with SLR-induced amplification of coastal flooding is assessed in terms of an increase in flood threshold. The results indicate that under current sea-level conditions, coastal flood risks are predominantly from exposure to acute extreme events. However, chronic risks from repetitive nonextreme flooding may exceed those from extreme floods under future SLR scenarios. Therefore, adaptation strategies may incorporate consideration about chronic flooding to avoid increasing cumulative losses under future SLR scenarios.

The role of large-scale drivers—climate, population, and adaption of efficient irrigation practices—in controlling irrigation water use efficiency has rarely been addressed. The primary objectives of our study are to (1) investigate the long-term changes in irrigation water use over the contiguous United States using a nationwide, multidecadal database created by USGS; and (2) understand the role of large-scale drivers in the water application rate, an indicator of irrigation efficiency. The authors find that the eastern states are currently withdrawing more surface water than in the past, while groundwater withdrawal has increased across all states. An increase in efficient irrigation schemes is leading to a decrease in traditional flood irrigation schemes. Spatiotemporal analyses confirm that the eastern states are presently withdrawing more irrigation water per acreage than in the past. While the choice of efficient irrigation practices (sprinkler and drip) is the major driver influencing the application rate, other factors such as cost and type of crops predominantly determine the type of irrigation system chosen for improving the application rate.

One of the most common ways of operating a reservoir system is to follow preestablished rules that specify the allowable releases at different time points of a year. Reservoir operating rules traditionally focus on human water uses such as flood control, water supply, hydroelectric power generation, and recreation, without fully considering downstream ecological requirements. At present, a key challenge is how to carry out multipurpose coordinated operations under the premise of restoring the flow regime for downstream ecosystems while maintaining (or minimizing interruptions to) the original water use benefits. To deal with this challenge, this paper presents a case study of a reservoir system in northern China (the Luan River Basin). The ecological flow requirements are estimated using Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration (IHA); water supply priorities for domestic, aquatic ecosystem, and agricultural uses are quantified and incorporated as constraints into a simulation-optimization model to optimize the operation. Reservoir storage allocation and water supply to the various requirements will be determined simultaneously under various inflow conditions. The modeling results demonstrate the effectiveness in identifying solutions to improve downstream river ecosystems while maintaining existing human water use benefits.

The operation of Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) during flood seasons is of high importance for ensuring the wellbeing of the people living in the downstream flood-prone areas. Therefore, protecting the downstream areas from flooding is the primary focus of TGR operation. Understanding the interaction between the benefits of flood control and the impacts of flood regulation on the local environment can help improve the operation of the TGR during the flood season. A system dynamics (SD) flood management simulation model of the TGR (SD_TGR) was developed in this study to explore how the operation of the TGR benefits the flood-prone areas and affects the local environment. Scenario-based simulations were performed with the SD_TGR model to understand the interactions between flood control, fish production, sediment flushing, and potential landslide risks under different events during the flood season. Results show that current operation that purely focuses on protecting downstream from flooding causes significant risks of landslides and significantly impairs the production of carp eggs during extreme flood events. The scenario that maintains the natural flow regime for carp spawning results in a substantial increase in the yield of carp eggs at the cost of potentially downstream alert flooding, but it has no impact on downstream critical flooding. The scenario of sediment flushing policy significantly reduces reservoir sediment accumulation, especially during extreme flood events, but its impact on downstream flood warning and critical flooding should not be ignored. The scenario of controlled reservoir drawdown rate reduces the risk of landslides at a considerable degree during small flood events without significantly impairing TGR’s flood control performance.

The Yarmouk River basin is shared between Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Since the 1960s, Yarmouk River flows have declined more than 85% despite the signature of bilateral agreements. Syria and Jordan blame each other for the decline and have both developed their own explanatory narratives: Jordan considers that Syria violated their 1987 agreement by building more dams than what was agreed on, while Syria blames climate change. In fact, because the two countries do not share information, neither on hydrological flows nor on water management, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic factors affecting the flow regime. Remote sensing and multiagent simulation (MAS) are combined to carry out an independent, quantitative analysis of Jordanian and Syrian competing narratives and show that a third cause for which there is no provision in the bilateral agreements actually explains much of the changes in the flow regime: groundwater overabstraction by Syrian highland farmers.

This case study developed a framework to assess the spatial distribution of water-use vulnerability within a river basin under various scenarios of climate change, climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Our indicator-based approach used a multicriteria decision-making technique and drew from the vulnerability concept of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes components of adaptive capacity, exposure, and sensitivity. To conduct a vulnerability assessment in the Han River basin, South Korea, datasets for the selected indicators from the IPCC vulnerability concept were used in conjunction with simulation results obtained from a hydrologic model. The datasets includes the existing national statistical database, climate change scenarios from representative concentration pathways (RCPs), scenarios for climate change adaptation, and mitigation strategies from shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). With six plausible combinations of the RCPs and SSPs, hydrological simulations using the soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) were carried out. The results for the Han River basin indicate that, of the three components of vulnerability, the greatest differences between scenarios were associated with the exposure component, which is influenced by physical climate and environmental changes. Furthermore, it was shown that vulnerability can vary with different SSPs as much as it can with different RCPs. The vulnerability results obtained with the plausible SSP scenarios markedly differed from those with the historical socioeconomic data (i.e., no SSP). This shows the importance of considering socioeconomic scenarios in studies of vulnerability and sustainability in the future.

Allocation of water from stream-aquifer systems must account for stream depletion from well withdrawal and for accretion from groundwater return flow. Both are subject to attenuation and delay. Transient impact assessment tools include: simplified analytical solutions; special finite-difference groundwater modeling software, such as MODFLOW; and the Delayed Impact Calculator (Calculator), a spreadsheet programmed by the author for streamlined finite-difference estimation of dynamic schedules. Well-induced stream depletion results from the Calculator are compared to results from established tools for a previously documented scenario. Similar comparisons are described for modified cases. Calculator results match MODFLOW (version 1.12.00) results ($y=1.0000\mathrm{x}$, $r^2=1.0000$, 3 sets, 90 pairs each). The finite-difference tools estimate somewhat quicker stream response to groundwater impulse than do analytical solutions derived for ideal semi-infinite aquifers. A previously documented schedule estimate for a simple groundwater return flow scenario is confirmed by the Calculator. An example of Calculator utility is given, treating return flow to a reach above an active surface diversion.

Water distribution systems can be divided into district metered areas (DMAs) to improve their management. DMAs are individual service regions within a distribution system that have a defined set of supply sources, and hydraulic and quality parameters can be controlled at their entrances. Designing DMA configurations to meet management goals, such as pressure or demand uniformity, is challenging because of the unique topological conditions of each water system, the variability in water demand required by each geographic zone, and the high interconnection of pipes within water systems. This research couples geospatial analysis with a hydraulic simulator to design DMAs for a highly constrained large water network. Solutions specify modifications of valve settings and tank operations and the addition of new pipes to the network. The performance of the DMA design is evaluated based on objectives to minimize implementation cost, demand similarity, pressure uniformity, and water age and constraints related to pressure and number of entrances per district. The methodology is applied to design DMAs for E-Town, a large water system that was presented at the Battle of Water Networks District Metered Areas. The coupled approach identifies DMA designs that satisfy constraints with satisfactory performance for multiple objectives.