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The socio-hydrology community has been very successful in promoting the need for taking the human factor into account in the mainstream hydrology literature since 2012. However, the interest in studying and modeling human-water systems is not new and pre-existed the post-2012 socio-hydrology. So, it is critical to ask what socio-hydrology has been able to offer that would have been unachievable using the existing methods, tools, and analysis frameworks. Thus far, the socio-hydrology studies show a strong overlap with what has already been in the literature, especially in the water resources systems and coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) areas. Nevertheless, the work in these areas has been generally dismissed by the socio-hydrology literature. This paper overviews some of the general concerns about originality, practicality, and contributions of socio-hydrology. It is argued that while in theory, a common sense about the need for considering humans as an integral component of water resources systems models can strengthen our coupled human-water systems research, the current approaches and trends in socio-hydrology can make this interest area less inclusive and interdisciplinary.

The common practices for the planning and management of Water Resources Systems (WSSs) have been challenged in the last few decades by global climate change processes, which are observed around the world in increasing frequencies. Climate change is manifested by climate variability, temperature increase, and extreme events such as droughts and floods, which have a decisive effect on natural resource availability and in turn on water quality. Historical records may not be sufficient to reliably account for uncertain future predictions under climate change conditions. While such highly uncertain situations become the “normal” case worldwide, the traditional practices of probabilistic risk measures cannot be used to appropriately quantify the uncertain phenomena under non-stationarity conditions. To better account for uncertain future conditions, the objective of this study is to develop a water management model based on Info-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT) using optimization under deep uncertainty conditions. The Info-Gap theory is a framework that measures the confidence in the operational decisions by quantifying the robustness to uncertainty without accounting for any probabilistic data. To demonstrate the method as a tool to better guide the long-term sustainable operation of the water supply system under uncertain future conditions, we applied the Info-Gap model to the Sea of Galilee (SoG) regional WSS, which is a significant part of the Israeli National Water System (INWS). For Israel, which is, like other Middle East semi-arid regions, prone to dry conditions and limited water availability, there are well-founded concerns that prolonged periods of drought lie ahead, as a consequence of the global climate change processes. This study contributes a management tool for decision making under deep uncertainty to improve the decision-making process and better adapt to unpredictable uncertain future conditions. We demonstrate how the IGDT could be formulated and used to analyze WSSs under different settings and demonstrate how decisions could be derived from the IGDT formulation. We also show a sensitivity analysis for the obtained solutions.

River basin planning in Bolivia is a relatively new endeavor that is primed for innovation and learning. One important learning opportunity relates to connecting watershed planning to processes within other planning units (e.g., municipalities) that have water management implications. A second opportunity relates to integrating watershed management, with a focus on land-based interventions, and water resources management, with a focus on the use and control of surface and groundwater resources. Bolivia&rsquo, s River Basin Policy and its primary planning instrument, the River Basin Master Plan (PDC in Spanish), provide the relevant innovation and learning context. Official guidance related to PDC development lacks explicit instructions related to the use of analytical tools, the definition of spatially and temporally dis-aggregated indicators to evaluate specific watershed and water management interventions, and a description of the exact way stakeholders engage in the evaluation process. This paper describes an effort to adapt the tenets of a novel planning support practice, Robust Decision Support (RDS), to the official guidelines of PDC development. The work enabled stakeholders to discern positive and negative interactions among water management interventions related to overall system performance, hydrologic risk management, and ecosystem functions, use indicators across varying spatial and temporal reference frames, and identify management strategies to improve outcomes and mitigate cross-regional or inter-sectorial conflicts.

Global change, that results from population growth, global warming and land use change (especially rapid urbanization), is directly affecting the complexity of water resources management problems and the uncertainty to which they are exposed. Both, the complexity and the uncertainty, are the result of dynamic interactions between multiple system elements within three major systems: (i) the physical environment, (ii) the social environment, and (iii) the constructed infrastructure environment including pipes, roads, bridges, buildings, and other components. Recent trends in dealing with complex water resources systems include consideration of the whole region being affected, explicit incorporation of all costs and benefits, development of a large number of alternative solutions, and the active (early) involvement of all stakeholders in the decision-making. Systems approaches based on simulation, optimization, and multi-objective analyses, in deterministic, stochastic and fuzzy forms, have demonstrated in the last half of last century, a great success in supporting effective water resources management. This paper explores the future opportunities that will utilize advancements in systems theory that might transform management of water resources on a broader scale. The paper presents performance-based water resources engineering as a methodological framework to extend the role of the systems approach in improved sustainable water resources management under changing conditions (with special consideration given to rapid climate destabilization). An illustrative example of a water supply network management under changing conditions is used to convey the basic principles of performance-based water resources engineering methodology.

Hydrol. Sci. J.-J. Sci. Hydrol.ISI Document Delivery No.: EB2CDTimes Cited: 0Cited Reference Count: 153Ceola, Serena Montanari, Alberto Krueger, Tobias Dyer, Fiona Kreibich, Heidi Westerberg, Ida Carr, Gemma Cudennec, Christophe Elshorbagy, Amin Savenije, Hubert Van der Zaag, Pieter Rosbjerg, Dan Aksoy, Hafzullah Viola, Francesco Petrucci, Guido MacLeod, Kit Croke, Barry Ganora, Daniele Hermans, Leon Polo, Maria J. Xu, Zongxue Borga, Marco Helmschrot, Jorg Toth, Elena Ranzi, Roberto Castellarin, Attilio Hurford, Anthony Brilly, Mitija Viglione, Alberto Bloeschl, Guenter Sivapalan, Murugesu Domeneghetti, Alessio Marinelli, Alberto Di Baldassarre, GiulianoPeople Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union [329762]; IRI THESys; German Excellence Initiative; EU [603587]IW acknowledges the support of the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's 7th Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/(grant agreement no. 329762). TK is funded, through IRI THESys, by the German Excellence Initiative. SC, AM, AC, and ET acknowledge financial support from the EU funded project SWITCHON (603587).Taylor & francis ltdAbingdon; We explore how to address the challenges of adaptation of water resources systems under changing conditions by supporting flexible, resilient and low-regret solutions, coupled with on-going monitoring and evaluation. This will require improved understanding of the linkages between biophysical and social aspects in order to better anticipate the possible future co-evolution of water systems and society. We also present a call to enhance the dialogue and foster the actions of governments, the international scientific community, research funding agencies and additional stakeholders in order to develop effective solutions to support water resources systems adaptation. Finally, we call the scientific community to a renewed and unified effort to deliver an innovative message to stakeholders. Water science is essential to resolve the water crisis, but the effectiveness of solutions depends, inter alia, on the capability of scientists to deliver a new, coherent and technical vision for the future development of water systems.

[EN] 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 characterize 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 enables to introduce these methodological decisions in order to guarantee consistency and comparability of the results between different river basins., The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, suggestions and positive feedback. The authors also wish to thank the Water and Environment team of INTECSA-INARSA and the Council of Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment of the Regional Government of Andalusia for the data provided in developing this study and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for its financial support through the NUTEGES project (CGL2012-34978). We also value the support provided by the European Community's Seventh Framework Program in financing the projects ENHANCE (FP7-ENV-2012, 308438), WAMCD (EC-DG Environment No. 07.0329/2013/671291/SUB/ENV.C.1), LIFE ALBUFERA (LIFE12 ENV/ES/000685), IMPREX (H2020-WATER-2014-2015, 641811) and Research Group RNM-308 of the Andalusian Government.

[EN] 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 hm3/year, being the Total Water Renewable Water Resources 3909 hm3/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., The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, suggestions and positive feedback. All remaining errors, however, are solely the responsibility of the authors. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Jucar River Basin Authority – Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar (Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment) for providing data to develop this study. The authors wish to thank the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for its financial support through the NUTEGES project (CGL2012-34978). We also value the support provided by the European Community's Seventh Framework Program in financing the projects ENHANCE (FP7-ENV2012, 308438) and IMPREX (H2020-WATER-2014-2015, 641811).