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Water planning and the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) represent the best way to help decision makers to identify and choose the most adequate alternatives among other possible ones. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-W) is displayed as a tool for the building of water balances in a river basin, providing a standard approach to achieve comparability of the results between different territories. The target of this paper is to present the building up of a tool that enables the combined use of hydrological models and water resources models to fill in the SEEA-W tables. At every step of the modelling chain, we are capable to build the asset accounts and the physical water supply and use tables according to SEEA-W approach along with an estimation of the water services costs. The case study is the Jucar River Basin District (RBD), located in the eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain which as in other many Mediterranean basins is currently water-stressed. To guide this work we have used PATRICAL model in combination with AQUATOOL Decision Support System (DSS). The results indicate that for the average year the total use of water in the district amounts to 15,143 hm 3 /year, being the Total Water Renewable Water Resources 3909 hm 3 /year. On the other hand, the water service costs in Jucar RBD amounts to 1634 million € per year at constant 2012 prices. It is noteworthy that 9% of these costs correspond to non-conventional resources, such as desalinated water, reused water and water transferred from other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Currently, water accounts are one of the next steps to be implemented in European River Basin Management Plans. Building water accounts is a complex task, mainly due to the lack of common European definitions and procedures. For their development, when data is not systematically measured, simulation models and estimations are necessary. The main idea of this paper is to present a new approach which enables the combined use of hydrological models and water resources models developed with AQUATOOL Decision Support System (DSS) to fill in the physical water supply and use tables and the asset accounts presented in the System of Economic and Environmental Accounts for Water (SEEAW). The case study is the Vélez River Basin, located in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula in Spain. In addition to obtaining the physical water supply and use tables and the asset accounts in this river basin, we present here the indicators as a result thereof. These indicators cover many critical aspects of water management, showing a general description of the river basin and allowing decision-makers to characterise the pressures on water resources. As a general conclusion, the union of AQUATOOL DSS and SEEAW will provide more complete information to decision-makers and it enables to introduce these methodological decisions in order to guarantee consistency and comparability of the results between different river basins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In future years, and due to climate change, the frequency and intensity of extreme droughts will increase in some areas of the planet with water scarcity problems, affecting the reliability and vulnerability of water resource systems (WRS). Therefore, several approaches for real-time drought management were proposed in this study to improve the predictive capacity of currently used methodologies. This study was conducted in the Júcar River Basin, a highly regulated Mediterranean WRS whose experience in drought management is currently based on the combination of a stochastic model for future inflow series generation (using previous historical inflows) and a risk assessment model. Here, the possibility of improving and updating this approach was analysed by proposing three different models that integrate seasonal meteorological forecasts into the series generation process: i) an auto-regressive moving-average model with exogenous variables (ARMAX); ii) a hydrological model (HBV); and iii) an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. These models were also combined (individually) with a risk assessment model to assist in the decision-making process through a very intuitive drought risk indicator for several months in advance. The main results confirmed the potential for improving the predictive capacity of the current method using seasonal forecasts, especially with the ARMAX and ANN models under drought scenarios. Their results were more robust, with lower variabilities and uncertainty even after seven months, which represents a good opportunity to improve the decision-making process of this basin in a changing near future. • Use of meteorological seasonal forecasts for drought risk assessment. • Several models for inflow series generation were tested for the risk assessment. • The methodologies were applied and tested in the Júcar River Basin, Spain. • An intuitive drought risk indicator for different drought scenarios was employed. • Shows that integration of seasonal forecasts into drought management is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An interval two-stage fuzzy credibility constraint programming (ITSFCCP) method was proposed. • Multiple uncertainties can be tackled for the social and natural complexities of the water resources system. • The model was demonstrated in the city of China and Myanmar. • The research scope and research factors (water environmental pollution factors) need to further expanded. In this paper, an interval two-stage fuzzy credibility constraint programming (ITSFCCP) method is proposed to deal with multiple uncertainties that can be expressed as fuzzy sets, discrete intervals and probability distributions, which can be used for effectively reflect natural and social complexities of relevant decision-making processes. Lincang city of Yunnan province, which is located in the southwest border of China, is employed as the demonstrative case. It is a frontier window and an important channel for China to face the "radiation center" of Southeast and South Asia. Also, it is the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer and the Geographic Water Distribution Line between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The city's water resources system is particularly unique due to its connection with Myanmar. Considering multiple uncertainties and complexities of the existing water resources system in the city, ITSFCCP is developed to optimize the allocation of water resources. The objective function of the model is the maximization of economic benefits of the water resources system. Fuzzy sets, discrete intervals and probability distribution were introduced to represent the multiple uncertainties associated with the natural and social complexities. Credibility levels were adopted to solve the complexity of multi-ethnic human society in Lincang. The results showed that the model could effectively deal with the uncertainties and complexities of Lincang's water resources system, and reflect the trade-offs between the system benefits and risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Links WA+ with SWAT to enhance it and to evaluate water management strategies. • The suggested framework is capable for macro and micro planning. • Evaluation of measures at farm and basin scales lead to more realistic results. • Increasing irrigation efficiency can increase the water consumption at the basin scale. Evaluation of water resources systems and implementation of appropriate management strategies requires accurate and well classified information describing supply, demand, and consumption. The WA+ water accounting framework is a relevant tool in this regard. Earlier applications of the WA+ framework draw heavily from remote sensing (RS) data; however, applying RS data limits the application of the framework to past and current situations. Such analyses are needed for future assessments due to new management and climate scenarios. Therefore, the objective of this research is to link WA+ with the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to enhance it and to evaluate water management strategies through an integrated framework. The resulting system, SWAT-FARS (customized version of SWAT model for Fars region) is capable of supporting macro and micro water planning through a systematic presentation of the past trends, current and future status in water supply and demand. To explore this methodology, the system was applied to the Tashk-Bakhtegan basin (Iran). The trends in supply and consumption within the basin and some of the water saving policies that are mandated by the country's 6th development plan were evaluated. Application of SWAT-FARS to the Task-Bakhtegan basin showed decrease in "Manageable water" of about 23% and a simultaneous increase of "Incremental irrigation" of about 53%; this lack of accessible water and imbalance of manageable water and water usage has almost omitted the basin's "Outflows". To alleviate pressures on the basin's water resources, a suggested elimination of rice cultivation and improving pressurized irrigation showed the first policy could reduce water consumption by 0.08 BCM/yr and the second one can even increase water consumption by 0.25 BCM/yr over current conditions. The methodology used to develop SWAT-FARS is strongly recommended for other regions suffering water scarcity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]