Water management tool may help ease drought effects

Seasonal and long-term climate forecasts are becoming increasingly more reliable, said Sankar Arumugam, N.C. St. Univ. asst. professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. He said water managers can use climate forecasts for short term planning to better plan for shortages due to drought. Arumugam has developed a water management framework that takes advantage of the weather forecasts to plan for droughts or excess rain to allow for the most efficient use of an area’s water resources. The research was funded by the Nat’l Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and was published in Water Resources Research.
Arumugam said the framework “would use forecast data to improve water management, allowing water managers to be proactive with their planning rather than reacting to events after the fact.” The proposed framework acknowledges that climate forecasts contain an element of uncertainty. It attempts to mitigate the uncertainty by incorporating water contracts that give end-users some idea of what they can expect. Arumugam said this allows the users to plan based on the uncertainty in the forecasts. The framework also offers insurance in the form of compensation if the forecast is incorrect and water managers can’t meet the contract terms. If a forecast is accurate and the contract terms are met, the managers will have used the water resources efficiently and will receive a performance fee from the end-users who were party to the contracts.