A FRAMEWORK FOR WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT TO SUPPORT INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF WATER RESOURCES UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE CONDITIONS

Climate change impacts on vulnerable water resource systems are a major challenge for water managers, engineers, and decision makers. Climate simulations of the 21st century indicate widespread warming in response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations with about half of the earth’s landmass experiencing significantly more intense hot extremes within three decades. In response to climate change, vulnerability assessment of water resources systems is typically performed based on quantifying the severity of the failure. This paper introduces an approach to assess vulnerability that incorporates a set of new factors. The method is demonstrated with a case study of a reservoir system in Salt Lake City, UT, USA using an integrated modeling framework composed of a hydrologic model and a systems model driven by temperature and precipitation data for a 30-year historical (1981-2010) period. The climates of the selected future (2036-2065) simulation periods were represented by five selected combinations of warm or hot, wet or dry, and central tendency projections derived from the results of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. The new metric developed in this study provides a comprehensive representation of system vulnerability under climate change scenarios, which can help decision makers and stakeholders evaluate system operation and infrastructure changes for climate adaptation. This work also presents a brief summary of an application to answer a specific management question for the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, specifically to increase the adaptive capacity of the system in face of climate change

کلیدواژه ها:

Climate change ، Vulnerability ، Severity of Failure ، Reservoir