Decision support systems for managing the water resources of the Komati River Basin

Abstract

The Komati River Basin is a trans-boundary watercourse shared by the Republic of South Africa (RSA), the Kingdom of Swaziland (KoS) and the Republic of Mozambique. The Komati Basin Water Authority (KOBWA) is charged with the management of the river basin under a treaty signed between RSA and Swaziland of which consent was given by Mozambique in a separate Agreement. KOBWA developed Decision Support Systems (DSS) to manage the system. These include DSS for: (i) long-term water allocation (yield model) between the countries, (ii) short-term water allocation (rationing model), and (iii) day-to-day water release (hydraulics model). An extensive water-monitoring program has been put in place to improve the effectiveness of these DSSs. There has been a wide acceptance of the DSS by the users in the basin since the DSSs enable water users and water managers to make transparent water management decisions. This paper describes the three DSSs including the institutional framework on which these are applied.

Improved Hydrological Understanding of a Semi-Arid Subtropical Transboundary Basin Using Multiple Techniques – The Incomati River Basin

“…They concluded that the reduction of natural fresh water fluxes (small floods) has a negative impact on the state of the environment and hence on the goods and services the estuary yields. Dlamini (2007) describes Decision Support Systems (DSS) developed by Komati Water Basin Authority (KOBWA) to manage the Komati system. These include DSS for: (i) long-term water allocation (yield model) between the countries, (ii) short-term water allocation (rationing model), and (iii) day-to-day water release (hydraulics model).…”

“…An extensive water-monitoring program has been put in place to improve the effectiveness of these DSSs. Dlamini (2007) reports that there has been a wide acceptance of the DSS by the users in the basin since they enable water users and water managers to make transparent water management decisions. Hellegers et al (2009) proposed a method that combines remote sensing and socioeconomic analyses to assess spatial variation in crop water productivity (CWP) and economic water productivity (EWP) in the Inkomati basin.…”

“…Often, decision-making involves difficult trade-offs. To assist, a number of decision-support tools have been developed (Jewitt and Görgens, 2000;DWAF, 2003b;Dlamini, 2007;DWAF, 2009a), most of which are based on optimising an economic objective function subject to constraints such as hydrological processes.…”