It is generally agreed at IIASA and elsewhere that water has high priority on the international sustainable development agenda. At first glance, it may appear that IIASA has no water-related research. However, this is not the case.

Until the mid-1990s IIASA studied various water issues in dedicated stand-alone water projects. At that time, the IIASA Council wanted to pursue other research topics, such as population aging and its consequences for social security, pension and health care. And so IIASA’s limited resources were refocused on these topics and the water program was phased out to accommodate them.

IIASA has not ignored the topic of water, however. Building on past research, water is an essential aspect of several of IIASA’s current programs. In this respect, by addressing water (and other driving issues of global change) within its programs, IIASA is genuinely and distinctively unique in the manner in which it conducts its interdisciplinary research.

Furthermore, in the fall of 2006, a water dialog was begun at IIASA to share knowledge of and experiences from ongoing water activities in the different programs within the institute and investigate the possibility of a more formally structured collaborative water activity.

We could hardly claim to be pursuing credible research on global change, in particular on activities like population, environment and development interactions and land use change and agriculture, if water issues were not an inherent part of that research. Six research programs currently include such work that has formed the basis for the water dialog (details can be found on the individual program web sites):

• Dynamic Systems
• Forestry
• Integrated Modeling Environment
• Land Use Change and Agriculture
• Processes of International Negotiation
• Risk and Vulnerability
• World Population

Dynamic Systems
Within its Network on Environmental Applications, the Dynamic Systems Program is collaborating with the Environmental Section of the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Venice. The joint research activity focuses on developing models and modeling techniques to be applied to analysis of the dynamics of coastal water bodies, with the ultimate goal of improving management in coastal zones. The collaboration concerns mainly the following topics:

1. Development of recursive estimation methods and their application to: (i) forecasting DO (Dissolved Oxygen) levels and (ii) control of water quality data collected by automatic probes in the Lagoon of Venice;
2. Development of an integrated model for: (i) assessing the environmental impact of long-line mussel cultures and (ii) estimating the biomass yield in relation to the ecosystem’s carrying, assimilative and holding capacities and to alternative mussel culture strategies. Mathematical control theory will be used to identify the optimal strategy. The model will be applied to the Italian coastline of the Adriatic Sea. This collaboration is being carried out in connection with the EU “ECASA” project.

Forestry
(1) The Forestry Program is employing the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model (EPIC) in an EU-funded project on enhancement of sinks of GHG gases (INSEA). The EPIC model was originally developed by a USDA modeling team to assess the status of US soil and water resources and has thereafter been continuously expanded and refined to integrate new processes important for GHG cycling analysis. The model uses drainage area as the analytical unit. Extensions of the basic model with supplementary models allow the analysis to be carried out for watersheds, and by that watershed management options can be analyzed. The major components in EPIC are weather simulation, plant growth and yield estimation, hydrology, erosion-sedimentation, nutrient and GHG cycling, soil temperature and moisture. EPIC includes a full hydrological cycle and operates on a daily step mode and has proved to yield robust results for simulating hundreds of years. The analysis at the Pan-European level with the EPIC model will be finalized and published in 2005 and a first set of global runs will come on-line during the first half of 2006. The Forestry and Agriculture Simulation and Optimization Model (FASOM) is fully coupled with EPIC and optimizes resource use including – optionally – water management objectives. The Forestry program is currently leading an international research network of FASOM/EPIC modelers under the IGBP-IHDP-WCRP-DIVERSITAS Global Carbon Project. Furthermore, there is work underway to couple FASOM to GGI tools.

(2) Remote sensing is an excellent tool helping to assess permanent water bodies, wetlands and moisture conditions (including freezing and thawing) both spatially and temporally. The consortium of SIBERIA-II (an EU-funded project on Multi-Sensor Concepts for Greenhouse Gas Accounting of Northern Eurasia) has developed methodologies for using different sensors for applications on assessments of these entities. FOR has together with its collaborators presented results fur using radar signals and ENVISAT ASAR WS data.

Integrated Modeling Environment
Water management and policy-making typically require development of complex models and integrated methods of model analysis.
The staff of the IME Project has a long history of diverse water-related activities. We summarize here only the two current activities that develop and apply novel methodology to two water-related extremes: scarcity and floods. The first deals with supporting water management in the Mexico City basin. The second concerns integrated management of catastrophic flood risks.

Water management in the Mexico City basin
The aquifer system of the Basin of Mexico is the main source of water supply to the Mexico City Metropolitan Zone (MCMZ) and its nearly 20 million inhabitants. The management of the Basin's water resources requires improved understanding of regional groundwater flow patterns, for which large amounts of data are required. Groundwater management policies can be implemented through an optimization/simulation approach for which a regional groundwater flow model is required. Additionally, the effect that land cover change (e.g. urban growth) has on aquifer recharge needs to be considered, for which a daily soil water balance was developed using the first regional database in the study area. For more infomation, please contact Jaime Carrera and/or follow this link.

Integrated modeling for management of catastrophic flood risks
The aim of this project is to conduct conceptual and model-based analysis of structural and financial measures for reducing regional impacts from extreme floods. The projects builds on the integrated catastrophic risks management model developed at IIASA for a number of catastrophic risks, e.g., floods, earthquakes, windstorms. The methodological challenges relate to selection of risk-adjusted criteria for robust decisions; issues of joint scaling of data, models and decisions; the GIS-based catastrophe models (generators); simulation of location-specific risk exposures and losses; fast Adaptive Monte Carlo optimization; the choice of appropriate discounting rates to justify long-term investments; evaluation of multipillar risk-management programs for the analysis of recent catastrophic floods on Tisza river in Hungary and Ukraine. For further information, please follow this link.

This is a joint activity of the IME and LUC programs. For more information, please contact Tatiana Ermolieva.

Land Use Change and Agriculture
Worldwide, the agricultural sector is the largest water user. Since about 70% of the world’s water withdrawals are used for irrigation, even small changes in the way crops are planted, irrigated, and harvested can make a big difference. Agriculture is the dominant user of not only water, but all other environmental and natural resources, meaning it has the most profound impact on the sustainability of the world’s ecosystems.

Research into water use, is therefore, a crucial part of IIASA’s Land Use Change and Agriculture (LUC) program. Current or recently completed research activities in this area include:

• CHINAGRO: The study on “Policy Decision Support for Sustainable Adaptation of China’s Agriculture to Globalization (CHINAGRO)” addresses a range of questions that are at the core of agriculture and rural development in the context of the challenges facing China’s agricultural sector over the next 25 years. By developing a new algorithm to separate county-level statistical data of crop production inputs and outputs into estimates for irrigated and rain-fed land and applying it to statistical data from China in 2000, LUC estimates that more than 70% of cereal production in China is on irrigated land with wide variations between regions and crops. In addition, various case study analyses show that there is great room to save water and improve water use efficiency in the agricultural sector through institutional and management reforms. With Chinese partners in CHINAGRO, LUC prepared irrigation scenarios for 2010 to 2030 that project water availability and discuss the efficiency of irrigation water use and prospects for expanding water-saving techniques.
• Other studies have included:
  • A two-year project funded under the international Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, which has assessed options for improving productivity of agriculture in the rain-fed systems of the semi-arid tropics.
  • How extreme weather events such as heavy precipitation events, floods, droughts, etc. impact on regional land use and economic systems, and identifying robust flood mitigating land use practices and financial instruments.
  • The impact of an extreme climate change scenario, namely, the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in three European regions: the Rhone Delta, the Rhine Delta, and the Thames Estuary.
• The LUC Program routinely assesses globally at grid-cell level, reference and crop specific soil water balances as part of agro-ecological analysis. Soil water balance calculations are used in the context of various global, regional and national climate databases and GCM based IPCC and other climate scenarios. To extend these water-related core activities, LUC is currently in the process of acquiring an internationally renowned global hydrological model. This model will be used to estimate hydrological implications especially with reference to current and future water availability for (i) the agricultural sector, (ii) the domestic sector, and (iii) natural ecosystems.

Forthcoming LUC program research into water includes:

• An integrated assessment of the water-related consequences of the changes in agriculture projected by FAO.
• Identification of hot-spots of water related agricultural vulnerability.
• A development of scenarios of future domestic water use based on spatially detailed long-term projections of urban and rural population.
• Water-related environmental risks associated with projected livestock production.

Processes of International Negotiation
The Network on Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) has a long history of water activities. Gunnar Sjoestedt and Guy Olivier Faure of the PIN Steering Committee have dealt with negotiations around the topic of water in several books. More recently, the current PIN book project on “Negotiating Risks” (Avenhaus, R. & Sjoestedt, G, eds.) includes two chapters focussing specifically on water: one on hazardous nuclear spills in the Barents Sea (Compton, K.) and one on the study of the Danube River (Ashcraft, C.) During her stay at IIASA as a participant of the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP), the author of the latter chapter, Catherine Ashcraft, worked with the PIN group on several research projects dealing with water, including the study on water disputes. Ms. Ashcraft later returned to IIASA to work on another case study of the Danube River and then joined the PIN Group on their most recent project on the Caspian Sea where she investigated sea/lake regimes and their details. The PIN group held their successful 1st Caspian Dialog session in cooperation with the Hollings Center and IIASA in Istanbul on 13-15 May 2006 with more sessions to follow. The aim of the Dialog is to establish a scientific cooperation among representatives from each of the 5 littoral states while bringing in IIASA scientists to share their knowledge and ideas.

Risk and Vulnerability
The purpose of the EU integrated project NeWater is to explore different transition paths from currently prevailing regimes of river basin water management into more adaptive future regimes. Work on the core conceptual ideas of the NeWater Project – adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience – will be housed within the Risk and Vulnerability (RAV) program. RAV brings the strong intellectual tradition of ecology to bear in the way it is approaching these water-focused topics.

RAV is leading a work package of the NeWater project with the purpose of identifying and modeling key elements of current water management systems and the transition of these elements to adaptive Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The aim is ultimately to assist policy makers and stakeholders to assess how adaptive capacity and resilience interact with vulnerability under different river basin management regimes. The project will examine a number of river basin cases, including the Amudarya in Uzbekistan and the Hungarian Tisza river (already the subject of path-breaking work at IIASA).

These same facets and computational methods of the Institute's contribution to NeWater also define the participation of RAV in another EU-funded project (CAVES), whose over-arching goal is to identify reasons why some complex, coupled human-natural systems seem to be more resilient to internal stresses and external shocks than are others. The Oder basin (Poland) is the focal case-study for IIASA in respect of CAVES.

The Risk and Vulnerability Program is also addressing issues of coping with the risks of flooding, specifically, the Dongting Lake (China) and the ToNankai region (Japan).

World Population
During the late 1980s discussions resulted in the conclusion that the highly complex issues of long-term population-environment interactions can be meaningfully analyzed through a series of case studies. The IIASA Population Program’s Population-Development-Environment (PDE) approach is developed by demographers and is organized in three concentric circles, with population and development embedded in the environment. The fundamental understanding is that population and environment are not separate entities that can be seen independently or even in opposition to each other. The population is seen as an integral part of nature. Human population and its quality of life is in the center (P). Emanating from and driven by population we can interpret and analyze the economic developments and environmental changes. The population is therefore surrounded by the man-made environment; we call it development (D). As explained above, all human life is embedded in the environment at every point, and is affected by environmental changes (E), such as water.

The approach aims to develop easy-to-use tools for decision makers, stakeholders, and scientists. Those tools, computer simulation models, offer the opportunity to involve the major stakeholders in the discussion platform. Based on these tools, the PDE approach explores a set of alternative sustainable development paths based on different assumptions (scenarios) up to 2020 or 2050. The results can be utilized for the choice among competing policy options. These models can also be used as an "effective translation tool" to close the gap between scientific and political language. Moreover, local environmental and socioeconomic conditions, and local priorities, and interests of local researchers and decision makers are taken seriously into account. Notwithstanding, the approach aims to compromise between comparable research designs and the adoption of research based on local conditions. The comparable part of the comprehensive studies is the population model (one model module). The environmental models will only be comparable within groups (for instance for Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique detailed water supply and demand models are programmed); the economic models can be classified, in terms of comparability, as in between.

For instance, basic PDE questions may be: How may human activities change the environment and vice versa, and to what degree? What policies can improve certain aspects of population-development-environment interactions?

Ongoing PDE case study

PDE Case Study: Population, Human Capital and Water in Egypt & Article in the Autumn 2004 issue of POPNET

Completed PDE Case Studies

1. Botswana, Mozambique, and Namibia (1997-2000) (CD-ROM also available)

These three country studies have extensive water supply and demand models. The water models are designed to provide forecasts of future regional water supply and demand in order to determine the sustainability of the water supply under various forecasts of economic, population, and climate changes. There are two models for each country, one for the specific case of the capitals, and one for so-called Socio-Ecological Region level. The water model breaks the region of interest down into the pertinent watersheds that contribute water to the surface and groundwater supply. For each country there are major hydrologic basins that were aggregated into macro basins from sub-basin maps (ALCOM, FAO) and delimited for analysis.

The connection of the water models to the population and development models occurs on both the water supply and demand sides. On the water demand side, population size, GDP per capita, and sectoral GDP drive the water use of the domestic, industrial, institutional, mining, energy, agricultural and livestock consumers. Domestic water use changes as a result of incomes (GDP per capita), urbanization, and population size. Industrial, Energy and Institutional water demands are linearly related to the total industrial and commercial output, which changes with each population scenario. The water demands for irrigation are unequally distributed throughout the year, depending on the growing cycle of crops. The growth of water use in mining is driven by changes in the exports economic sector. Livestock water use changes as a result of changes in livestock production, which may grow or decline depending on the economic demand.

The computer simulation (available online and can be ordered as CD-ROM) models offer several scenarios that can be modeled by the end user, and several variables may be changed or turned on depending on the choice of the user (time scale, start time, climate change, groundwater scenario, demand side, percent efficient).

2. Yucatan (1996)
   Miguel J. Villasuso and Renan Mendez Ramos. A Conceptual Model of the Aquifer of the Yucatan Peninsul. Pages 120-139 in Wolfgang Lutz, Leonel Prieto, and Warren Sanderson (eds). 2000. Population, Development, and Environment on the Yucatan Peninsula: From Ancient Maya to 2030. Laxenburg, IIASA, RR-00-14.
3. Cape Verde (1994-1995)
   The study includes simulation modeling. The PDE simulation model combines multi-state population projection; a semi-equilibrium input-output model; and a water and agricultural model. The model is used to make a historical scenario and future scenarios of the case country.
4. Mauritius (1993-1995)

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Last updated: 30 Jan 2012