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As the central product of the BMBF-KLIMZUG-funded Joint Network and Research Project (JNRP) 'dynaklim - Dynamic adaptation of regional planning and development processes to the effects of climate change in the Emscher-Lippe region (North Rhine Westphalia, Germany)', the Roadmap 2020 'Regional Climate Adaptation' has been developed by the various regional stakeholders and institutions containing specific regional scenarios, strategies and adaptation measures applicable throughout the region. This paper presents the method, elements and main results of this regional roadmap process by using the example of the thematic sub-roadmap 'Water Sensitive Urban Design 2020'. With a focus on the process support tool 'KlimaFLEX', one of the main adaptation measures of the WSUD 2020 roadmap, typical challenges for integrated climate change adaptation like scattered knowledge, knowledge gaps and divided responsibilities but also potential solutions and promising chances for urban development and urban water management are discussed. With the roadmap and the related tool, the relevant stakeholders of the Emscher-Lippe region have jointly developed important prerequisites to integrate their knowledge, to clarify vulnerabilities, adaptation goals, responsibilities and interests, and to foresightedly coordinate measures, resources, priorities and schedules for an efficient joint urban planning, well-grounded decision-making in times of continued uncertainties and step-by-step implementation of adaptation measures from now on.

This paper interprets differences in flood hazard projections over Europe and identifies likely sources of discrepancy. Further, it discusses potential implications of these differences for flood risk reduction and adaptation to climate change. The discrepancy in flood hazard projections raises caution, especially among decision makers in charge of water resources management, flood risk reduction, and climate change adaptation at regional to local scales. Because it is naïve to expect availability of trustworthy quantitative projections of future flood hazard, in order to reduce flood risk one should focus attention on mapping of current and future risks and vulnerability hotspots and improve the situation there. Although an intercomparison of flood hazard projections is done in this paper and differences are identified and interpreted, it does not seems possible to recommend which large-scale studies may be considered most credible in particular areas of Europe. EDITOR D. Koutsoyiannis ASSOCIATE EDITOR not assigned [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents three different multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches in search for the best water management solution for the Pek River catchment area (CA). The three objectives of this paper are: (1) present some outcomes of an important international project that might help improve water management in other regions worldwide; (2) show how optimal water management is addressed in a catchment that exhibits a declining water resources trend, in this case in Serbia; and (3) demonstrate that three different MCDA approaches, if all input parameters are selected properly and consistently, do not result in any significant differences in the final selection of the best solution (there are minor variations in the final relative values, but the ranking of the analyzed alternatives does not change). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate risk management is a new and evolving area and many decisions are likely to be affected by climate risks over the long-form. This paper presents a decision-making framework designed for managing climate alongside non-climate risk factors. The framework describes a process that should help identify and manage these risks. It can be used to help decision-makers answer questions about whether adaptation is required, and, if so, which measures should be implemented. Adaptive management is recommended as a useful approach for dealing with climate and other uncertainties. This paper describes an application of the framework to a wafer resources case study. Feedback from training workshops based on four different case studies suggests the framework provides of minimum a useful (post-hoc) decision analysis tool. Potential users, who include planners, consultants and policy-makers have been largely positive about the prospective utility of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies an ontological politics approach for studying how complexity, uncertainty, and ignorance are being dealt with in the Netherlands by looking at how knowledges are produced and incorporated in decision-making on uncertain climate change. On the basis of work done in the Netherlands, this paper shows two things in particular. First, how decision making responses historically have been subject to change under the influence of floods and how the emergence of climate change has significantly changed these floods. Second, based on the analysis of processes dealing with a blue-green algae problem in a lake, climate change not only changed decision making responses but also changed the very reality that is being enacted. Consequently, this brings an ethical dimension to the fore, related to the intrinsic tension between the growing awareness that 'all is interconnected' on the one hand and the realization we cannot take all into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts will likely become more frequent, greater in magnitude and longer in duration in the future due to climate change. Already in the present climate, a variety of drought events may occur with different exceedance frequencies. These frequencies are becoming more uncertain due to climate change. Many methods in support of drought risk management focus on providing insight into changing drought frequencies, and use water supply reliability as a key decision criterion. In contrast, robustness analysis focuses on providing insight into the full range of drought events and their impact on a system's functionality. This method has been developed for flood risk systems, but applications on drought risk systems are lacking. This paper aims to develop robustness analysis for drought risk systems, and illustrates the approach through a case study with a water supply reservoir and its users. We explore drought characterization and the assessment of a system's ability to deal with drought events, by quantifying the severity and socioeconomic impact of a variety of drought events, both frequent and rare ones. Furthermore, we show the effect of three common drought management strategies (increasing supply, reducing demand and implementing hedging rules) on the robustness of the coupled water supply and socio-economic system. The case is inspired by Oologah Lake, a multipurpose reservoir in Oklahoma, United States. Results demonstrate that although demand reduction and supply increase may have a comparable effect on the supply reliability, demand reduction may be preferred from a robustness perspective. To prepare drought management plans for dealing with current and future droughts, it is thus recommended to test how alternative drought strategies contribute to a system's robustness rather than relying solely on water reliability as the decision criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change may result in reduced water supply from the Alps – an important water resource for Europe. This paper presents a multilingual platform that combines spatial and multi-criteria decision-support tools to facilitate stakeholder collaboration in the analysis of water management adaptation options. The platform has an interactive map interface that allows participants to select a location of their interest within the Alpine Arc. By utilising the decision-support tool, stakeholders can identify suitable adaptation solutions for different geographical units, according to their experience and preference. The platform was used to involve experts across Alpine borders, domains and decision-making levels, as well as a group of university students. The experts favoured the planning instruments for saving water, while the students inclined towards the measures that would improve water conservation. The initial results confirmed the suitability of the platform for future involvement of decision-makers in spatio-temporal analyses of adaptation pathways in the Alps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing future climate and its potential implications on river flows is a key challenge facing water resource planners. Sound, scientifically-based advice to decision makers also needs to incorporate information on the uncertainty in the results. Moreover, existing bias in the reproduction of the ‘current’ (or baseline) river flow regime is likely to transfer to the simulations of flow in future time horizons, and it is thus critical to undertake baseline flow assessment while undertaking future impacts studies. This paper investigates the three main sources of uncertainty surrounding climate change impact studies on river flows: uncertainty in GCMs, in downscaling techniques and in hydrological modelling. The study looked at four British catchments’ flow series simulated by a lumped conceptual rainfall–runoff model with observed and GCM-derived rainfall series representative of the baseline time horizon (1961–1990). A block-resample technique was used to assess climate variability, either from observed records (natural variability) or reproduced by GCMs. Variations in mean monthly flows due to hydrological model uncertainty from different model structures or model parameters were also evaluated. Three GCMs (HadCM3, CCGCM2, and CSIRO-mk2) and two downscaling techniques (SDSM and HadRM3) were considered. Results showed that for all four catchments, GCM uncertainty is generally larger than downscaling uncertainty, and both are consistently greater than uncertainty from hydrological modelling or natural variability. No GCM or downscaling technique was found to be significantly better or to have a systematic bias smaller than the others. This highlights the need to consider more than one GCM and downscaling technique in impact studies, and to assess the bias they introduce when modelling river flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current fabric of urban areas is largely the result of past land development and land-use planning decisions. Historically, there was relatively little consideration of the impact of these decisions upon hydrological systems within and outside urban areas. Despite their close relationship, urban and regional planning and water resources management have typically been carried out separately and guided by different institutional arrangements. The range of impacts of urbanisation on hydrological systems at the city-region scale, and the dependence of urbanised areas upon these systems, call for better integration between the sectors of urban and regional planning and water resources management to ensure the sustainability and resilience of cities and their regions to future changes and uncertainties. This paper evaluates the extent to which planning mechanisms currently support integration between land-use and water resource sectors. The evaluation draws on a comparative analysis of 113 statutory and non-statutory planning mechanisms in three Australian capital city-regions: South East Queensland, and the Melbourne and Perth Metropolitan regions. Results indicate that the function of water at the city-region scale, including its role in supporting environmental connectivity, needs to be better understood and considered by land-use planning systems; improved institutional capacity is required to enable both sectors to deal with future changes and uncertainties related to water resources; and emergent planning trends supportive of the consideration of water connectivity at the city-region scale are yet to be fully implemented. Based on the results, the paper concludes by exploring how the concept of urban metabolism may facilitate better integration between the two sectors, along with the identification of best suited planning mechanisms and needed changes in governance and institutional arrangements conducive to integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the DCMA concerning the future risk of the water security status. We considered three risk factors: population growth, economic growth, and natural water supply–demand differences. In the risk analysis part, we consulted with experts from several sectors including academia, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and industry, to predict that the probability of future water stresses in high-, medium-, and low-risk scenarios are 0.73, 0.24, and 0.03, respectively. In the decision analysis part, we adopted two multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches that include multiple attribute value theory (MAVT) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods to evaluate the best alternative decision to alleviate future water stresses in the DCMA. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates that, although expanding existing water reservation might be a solution to tackle the challenge, the best option really closely connects to the weighting scheme of the criteria considered in the framework. This study provides a valuable risk and decision analysis framework to analyze the water security status associated with the future water supply and demand gap decrease caused by three risk factors: population growth, climate change, and natural water supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global change in climate and consequent large impacts on regional hydrologic systems have, in recent years, motivated significant research efforts in water resources modeling under climate change. In an integrated future hydrologic scenario, it is likely that water availability and demands will change significantly due to modifications in hydro-climatic variables such as rainfall, reservoir inflows, temperature, net radiation, wind speed and humidity. An integrated regional water resources management model should capture the likely impacts of climate change on water demands and water availability along with uncertainties associated with climate change impacts and with management goals and objectives under non-stationary conditions. Uncertainties in an integrated regional water resources management model, accumulating from various stages of decision making include climate model and scenario uncertainty in the hydro-climatic impact assessment, uncertainty due to conflicting interests of the water users and uncertainty due to inherent variability of the reservoir inflows. This paper presents an integrated regional water resources management modeling approach considering uncertainties at various stages of decision making by an integration of a hydro-climatic variable projection model, a water demand quantification model, a water quantity management model and a water quality control model. Modeling tools of canonical correlation analysis, stochastic dynamic programming and fuzzy optimization are used in an integrated framework, in the approach presented here. The proposed modeling approach is demonstrated with the case study of the Bhadra Reservoir system in Karnataka, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With their ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, many countries have established forests on previously non-forested land with the view of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. While these forests indisputably result in increased carbon storage in above-ground biomass, consideration of other major implications is often neglected. Forest establishment results in changes in albedo and soil carbon storage, reduced runoff and downstream water supply, and effects on biodiversity. Such effects of forest establishment may be less desirable from environmental, economic and social perspectives. While there have been many studies of the impacts of forest establishment on individual aspects, policy makers need to be able to integrate the benefits and consequences to assist in making decisions on land management. Further, the relative magnitude of the effects of forestry needs to be considered in the context of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide partial pressure and climate change resulting in increasing temperature and changes in the amount and distribution of rainfall. This introductory review highlights the major benefits and consequences of forest establishment and demonstrates progress in integrating across the services provided by forests. New modelling approaches are being developed that allow analysis of benefits, consequences and trade-offs to assist policy makers in decisions to manage the provision of multiple resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought events in the Mediterranean are likely to increase in frequency, duration and intensity due to climate change, thereby affecting crop production. Information about drought is valuable for river basin authorities and the farmers affected by their decisions. The economic value of this information and the resulting decisions are of interest to these two stakeholder groups and to the information providers. Understanding the dynamics of extreme events, including droughts, in future climate scenarios for the Mediterranean is being improved continuously. This paper analyses the economic value of information on drought events taking into account the risk aversion of water managers. We consider the effects of drought management plans on rice production in the Ebro river basin. This enables us to compute the willingness to compensate the river basin authority for more accurate information allowing for better decision-making. If runoff is reduced, river basin planners can consider the reduction of water allocation for irrigation in order to eliminate the risk of water scarcity. Alternately, river basin planners may decide to maintain water allocation and accept a reduction of water supply reliability, leaving farmers exposed to drought events. These two alternatives offer different risk levels for crop production and farmers' incomes which determine the value of this information to the river basin authority. The information is relevant for the revision of River Basin Management Plans of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) within the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on planning literature which include approaches to empirical work in regional economics, understanding the barriers to social adaptation, and management of large city regions.

Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is a promising adaptation measure to reduce vulnerability to climate change and hydrological variability. However, in areas where the basin is highly polluted, densely populated, and intensely cultivated, implementing suitable MAR strategies is a significant challenge. This study used a geographic information system-based multicriteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) approach to delineate the MAR potential sites using seven thematic layers describing surface and subsurface features. Further, basin-specific MAR approach was developed using information such as polluted water areas, canal network distribution for water supply, and cropping patterns. The results of this study indicate that only 17% of the area is highly suitable, while 54% and 29% were found moderately suitable and unsuitable for the MAR approach. Since most highly and moderately suitable sites were falling in the agricultural areas, agricultural-based MAR (AgMAR) was considered a preferred option. AquaCrop model for sugarcane was developed considering excess canal water supply during the grand growth stage to understand the AgMAR potential in the study area. It was observed that the potential recharge under normal irrigation scenarios varies from 135.5 to 272 mm/year, which can be increased through AgMAR up to 545 mm/year depending on the water availability for excess irrigations. This study provides an improved understanding of the parameters that should be considered for MAR site selection and post-GIS-MCDA analysis to assess the basin-specific MAR strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consideration of the impact of climate change has penetrated urban infrastructure planning worldwide, and the water sector is no exception. This paper provides an approach to incorporate a low-carbon consideration and climate externalities into an environmental economic analysis for an urban water treatment work planning with a case study from Ningbo, China. The discounted incremental costs are calculated with carbon footprint accounting. The analysis confirms that the inclusion of GHG emission costs as a component in the techno-economic criteria affects the priority ranking for the siting options, and may lead to an entirely different decision on the siting of the water supply facility. However, these criteria should be cross-examined with a sensitivity test during the decision making process, with the discounting rate and carbon pricing level being the main sensitivity factors. This study suggests that the benchmark discount rate for the water supply infrastructure average incremental economic cost accounting should be decreased from 6% to 4.5–4.0%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to link two Special Issues of the Australasian Journal of Water Resources – this Issue on Improved Water Planning and another in preparation on Review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2026: An opportunity to reconsider the management of the Murray–Darling Basin. The two Special Issues have a number of common threads which are discussed, namely: integration between water policy and other major policy areas; accounting for climate change; decision-making processes; and Indigenous involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops alternative strategies for European call options for water purchase under hydrological uncertainties that can be used by water resources managers for decision making. Each alternative strategy maximizes its own objective over a selected sequence of future hydrology that is characterized by exceedance probability. Water trade provides flexibility and enhances water distribution system reliability. However, water trade between two parties in a regional water distribution system involves many issues, such as delivery network, reservoir operation rules, storage space, demand, water availability, uncertainty, and any existing contracts. An option is a security giving the right to buy or sell an asset; in our case, the asset is water. We extend a flow path-based water distribution model to include reservoir operation rules. The model simultaneously considers both the physical distribution network as well as the relationships between water sellers and buyers. We first test the model extension. Then we apply the proposed optimization model for European call options to the Tainan water distribution system in southern Taiwan. The fonnulation lends itself to a mixed integer linear programming model. We use the weighing method to formulate a composite function for a multiobjective problem. The proposed methodology provides water resources managers with an overall picture of water trade strategies and the consequence of each strategy. The results from the case study indicate that the strategy associated with a streamfiow exceedence probability of 50% or smaller should be adopted as the reference strategy for the Tainan water distribution system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The challenge of governing transboundary water resources is expected to increase with climate change and the resulting need to adapt to its impacts such as temperature increase, more precipitation in the wet season and less in the dry season. In a number of transboundary basins, international regimes, and in particular river basin commissions, are emerging to account for this and other challenges. Some basins are, however, rather advanced in terms of developing climate change adaptation strategies, while others are in a more nascent stage. For the two case studies of the Orange-Senqu and Mekong river basins, this paper attempts to explain the different degrees of progress towards climate change adaptation by applying regime effectiveness analysis. First, we analyze, using the Activity Diagram (AD) of the Management and Transition Framework (MTF), at which stage in the climate change adaptation policy formation process each of the two basins is. Then we attempt to explain the different degrees of progress towards adaptation by means of regime effectiveness theory. Variables indicating regime effectiveness are taken from the literature and further developed to suit the context of climate change adaptation. We find that the different degrees of progress can partially be explained by some variables of regime effectiveness such as the characteristics of rules and procedures, organizational structure, the role of riparian countries as well as international context. At the same time, the analysis points to the need for an analysis of additional factors that potentially shape decision-making and policy processes for climate change adaptation in international river basins such as (a) the hydrological, political and socio-economic setting, (b) underlying principles of regional cooperation (or conflict), (c) interests and values of the various actors in the negotiation process and (d) the possible linkages and trade-offs with other policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on topics related to history and planning including attitudes towards menstruation in Elizabethan England, sexual fantasy in modern America, and feminism.

Natural resources are gradually coming under continuous and increasing pressure due to anthropogenic interventions and climate variabilities. The result of these pressures is reflected in the sustainability of natural resources. Significant scientific efforts during the recent years focus on mitigating the effects of these pressures and on increasing the sustainability of natural resources. Hence, there is a need to develop specific indices and indicators that will reveal the areas having the highest risks. The Water and Land Resources Degradation Index (WLDI) was developed for this purpose. WLDI consists of eleven indicators and its outcome results from the spatiotemporal performance of these indicators. TheWLDI is based on the Standardized Drought Vulnerability Index (SDVI) and the Environmentally Sensitive Areas Index (ESAI). TheWLDI is applied for the period fromOctober 1983 to September 1996, considering Greece as a study area. The results of the application of this index reveal the areas with the highest risks, especially in the agricultural sector, with less than the needed water quantities due to extensive periods of droughts. This index could be used by scientists, but also by policy makers, to better and more sustainably manage environmental pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water resources and water-related ecosystem services are vital to social–ecological systems, yet in many parts of the world water as a finite resource is revealed by its unsustainable and inequitable use. Increased threats to water security and supply of ecosystem services arise due to increasing and contested demand and declining supply due to climate change and other stressors. Trade-off decisions need to be made between competing sectors of food production, hydropower generation and environmental needs: the water–food–energy–environment nexus. New approaches are needed to address how water resources and ecosystem service benefits are shared among competing interests. One approach involves changes to decision contexts, shaped by the values, rules and knowledge which decision makers draw upon when considering options. By changing decision contexts, new opportunities become available. Here, we describe Nexus Webs; a knowledge framework designed to promote collaborative exploration of synergies and trade-offs and enable changes in decision contexts for water use. As part of the process of shifting this framework from concept to operation, we apply Nexus Webs to contrasting water use scenarios in the Pangani Basin (Tanzania and Kenya), where water is over-allocated and highly contested. Under each scenario, we detail linkages between different water uses and their effects on assets (ecosystems, biodiversity and built infrastructure), the effects on assets for the supply of ecosystem services and how these affect livelihoods and wellbeing. We outline how Nexus Webs can be developed and used to change the decision context to consider options for more socially inclusive and equitable use of water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent water resources planning studies have proposed climate adaptation strategies in which infrastructure and policy actions are triggered by observed thresholds or "signposts." However, the success of such strategies depends on whether thresholds can be accurately linked to future vulnerabilities. This study presents a framework for testing the ability of adaptation thresholds to dynamically identify vulnerable scenarios within ensemble projections. Streamflow projections for 91 river sites predominantly in the western USA are used as a case study in which vulnerability is determined by the ensemble members with the lowest 10% of end-of-century mean annual flow. Illustrative planning thresholds are defined through time for each site based on the mean streamflow below which a specified fraction of scenarios is vulnerable. We perform a leave-one-out cross-validation to compute the frequency of incorrectly identifying or failing to identify a vulnerable scenario (false positives and false negatives, respectively). Results show that in general, this method of defining thresholds can identify vulnerable scenarios with low false positive rates (< 10%), but with false negative rates for many rivers remaining higher than random chance until roughly 2060. This finding highlights the tradeoff between frequently triggering unnecessary action and failing to identify potential vulnerabilities until later in the century, and suggests room for improvement in the threshold-setting technique that could be benchmarked with this approach. This testing framework could extend to thresholds defined with multivariate statistics, or to any application using thresholds and ensemble projections, such as long-term flood and drought risk, or sea level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, Kahramanmaraş Central District is aimed to determine the years which are arid or rainy by taking average of annuals in winter, spring, summer, autumn seasons between the years 1995 and 2014, and to calculate the possibility of temporary dry or rainy in future years. TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method was chosen to estimate as a creating a model requires 6 parameters (long-term, average minimum temperature and maximum temperature, average minimum and maximum relative humidity, average annual precipitation, total annual precipitation) in this direction. For this purpose, data of Kahramanmaraş Meteorological Station, which has the longest rainfall records in the region, are used. In this study, days with less than 2.5 mm of rainfall were considered dry, and days with 2.5 mm or more of rainfall were considered rainy. TOPSIS method resulted in 6 steps and meteorological droughts were detected in 2002, 2008 and 2011. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, there is the possibility of a gradual drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From climate change to hydraulic fracturing, and from drinking water safely to wildfires, environmental challenges are changing. The United States has made substantial environmental protection progress based on media-specific and single pollutant risk-based frameworks. However, today's environmental problems are increasingly complex and new scientific approaches and tools are needed to achieve sustainable solutions to protect the environment and public health. In this article, we present examples of today's environmental challenges and offer an integrated systems approach to address them. We provide a strategic framework and recommendations for advancing the application of science for protecting the environment and public health. We posit that addressing 21st century challenges requires transdisciplinary and systems approaches, new data sources, and stakeholder partnerships. To address these challenges, we outline a process driven by problem formulation with the following steps: a) formulate the problem holis-tically, b) gather and synthesize diverse information, c) develop and assess options, and d) implement sustainable solutions. This process will require new skills and education in systems science, with an emphasis on science translation. A systems-based approach can transcend media- and receptor-specific bounds, integrate diverse information, and recognize the inextricable link between ecology and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water managers across the United States face the need to make informed policy decisions regarding long-term impacts of climate change on water resources. To provide a scientifically informed basis for this, the evolution of important components of the basin-scale water balance through the end of the twenty-first century is estimated. Bias-corrected and spatially downscaled climate projections, from phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) of the World Climate Research Programme, were used to drive a spatially distributed Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model of hydrologic processes in the Salt-Verde basin in the southwestern United States. From the suite of CMIP3 models, the authors select a five-model subset, including three that best reproduce the historical climatology for the study region, plus two others to represent wetter and drier than model average conditions, so as to represent the range of GCM prediction uncertainty. For each GCM, data for three emission scenarios (A1B, A2, and B1) were used to drive the hydrologic model into the future. The projections of this model ensemble indicate a statistically significant 25% decrease in streamflow by the end of the twenty-first century. The primary cause for this change is due to projected decreases in winter precipitation accompanied by significant (temperature driven) reductions in storage of snow and increased winter evaporation. The results show that water management in central Arizona is highly likely to be impacted by changes in regional climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the effects of anthropogenic climate change have found that the magnitude and frequency of intense precipitation events are expected to increase over the next century for the midwestern United States. The goal of this study was to use statistically downscaled and debiased precipitation projections for the state of Wisconsin derived from 14 general circulation models (GCMs) to assess the projected precipitation changes for the mid-21st century in a way that is relevant to water-resource decision making. The authors analyzed metrics that are relevant to storm-water design, such as the 100-year, 24-h quantile, and the authors also evaluated the changes in a riskassessment context using idealized damage functions that translate precipitation depths into economic damages. The results of our designmetric analysis show that the 100-year, 24-h quantiles for Wisconsin are projected to have significant but modest increases of approximately 11% over the next 50 years. Our risk assessment shows that the largest percent changes in risk for Wisconsin are projected to be in the northeast portion of the state. Both of these analyses will be used as part of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) to develop climate-change adaptation strategies for communities throughout the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch Delta Program is currently developing new government policies for flood protection and fresh water supply. Decision support instruments have to address the program's technical and political complexity. The water system functions are highly interwoven and would benefit from an integrated approach on a national level, with decisions supported by a scientific Systems Analysis. Politically, there is a tendency towards broad participation and decentralization, and decision-making is typically supported by Conflict Resolution methods. To connect these two sides of the Delta Program's task, an outline is presented of an internet community-based interactive instrument, preliminarily named SimDelta. On-line interactive maps and elements of serious gaming intuitively provide local Delta Program participants insight into the interaction between scenarios, problems, and solutions. SimDelta uses the internet to more frequently and efficiently present conceptual designs by architects and engineers to the Delta Program stakeholders, record their preferences, and "crowdsource" corrections, improvements and new ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on various topics which include social life and civic education in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the political aspect of neighborhood football clubs in Santiago, Chile and the legacy of urban renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C.

The article presents abstracts on planning-related topics which include an examination of the popularity of dancing in New Zealand during the 1920s and 1930s, an examination of how religious diversity in community affects church membership in a period of high growth and social change and an examination of child labor in urban industries in the Dutch Republic.

The article presents abstracts of planning. They include "The Fall and Rise of the Local Community: A Comparative and Historical Perspective," by Hellmut Wollman, "The Compact Versus the Dispersed City: History of Planning Ideas on Sofia's Urban Form," by Sonia Hirt, and "A Paradigm for Practice," by Ronald D. Brunner.

Presents abstracts of environmental planning research. They include "Integrating a performance-based approach into practice: A case study," "Local commitment to state-mandated planning in coastal North Carolina" and "Fiscal consequences of concentrated poverty in a metropolitan region."

This study aims to provide improved knowledge and evidence on current (1986–2015) climate variation based on six rainfall indices over five West African countries (Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Benin) using the Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) dataset. On average, precipitation has increased over the central Sahel and the western Sahel. This increase is associated with increase in the number of rainy days, longer wet spells and shorter dry spells. Over the Guinea Coast, the slight increase in precipitation is associated with an increase in the intensity of rainfall with a shorter duration of wet spells. However, these mean changes in precipitation are not all statistically significant and uniform within a country. While previous studies are focused on regional and sub-regional scales, this study contributes to deliver a climate information at a country level that is more relevant for decision making and for policy makers, and to document climate-related risks within a country to feed impact studies in key sectors of the development, such as agriculture and water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]