Making multi-stakeholder water resources decisions with limited streamflow information
Hecht, Jory.
2017
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Abstract: Limited streamflow information makes water resource decisions more
challenging. Moreover, modeling choices for addressing streamflow uncertainty may benefit
some stakeholders more than others. This dissertation offers three relatively parsimonious
approaches for screening multi-stakeholder water resources decisions, all of which account
for streamflow uncertainty. While these approac... read morehes are applicable to many water resources
problems, I present applications that (i) characterize changes in flood variability, (ii)
identify long-term floodplain management plans robust to uncertain climate change, and
(iii) evaluate tradeoffs between reservoir storage benefits and riverine ecosystem
conservation. First, I present a parsimonious two-stage ordinary least squares (OLS)
regression model, which detects trends in both the central tendency and variability of
annual floods. Neglecting increasing (decreasing) trends in the coefficient of variation at
stations with concurrent increases in the mean annual flood can lead to the substantial
under-design (over-design) of flood protection strategies. This OLS regression modeling
approach also provides trend uncertainty estimates (type I and II errors) useful for
decision-making. Second, in some cases, there may be insufficient information for modeling
changes in floods probabilistically, especially when characterizing impacts of future
climate change using different General Circulation Models (GCMs). Under these
circumstances, minimax regret optimization models can still identify adaptation plans that
minimize both the over- and under-design consequences of climate change uncertainty. I
introduce a mixed integer programming (MIP) optimization model identifies sequences for
implementing river reach- and property-scale adaptation measures that are robust to
uncertain changes in floods during the 21st century. Third, attenuating hydrologic extremes
beyond critical thresholds can also harm ecosystems and communities adapted to them. In
settings with short pre- and post-dam records, it is often difficult to rule out that these
changes are, in fact, due to dam operations and not random variability. Hypothesis tests
offer information about (i) the likelihood of losing hydropower production by unnecessarily
changing dam operations and (ii) the likelihood of adverse ecological impacts by not
changing them when necessary. Moreover, this probabilistic information can be incorporated
into a Bayesian decision-making framework that evaluates the potential hydropower and
ecosystem consequences of different operating rules.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2017.
Submitted to the Dept. of Civil Engineering.
Advisor: Richard Vogel.
Committee: Paul Kirshen, James Limbrunner, and Charles Kroll.
Keywords: Water resources management, Hydrologic sciences, and Civil engineering.read less - ID:
- cf95jp84t
- Component ID:
- tufts:22408
- To Cite:
- DCA Citation Guide EndNote
