Towards risk‐based water resources planning in England and Wales under a changing climate

Hall, Jim W.; Watts, Glenn; Keil, Mike; Vial, L. de; Street, Roger; Conlan, Kathleen E.; O’Connell, P. E.; Beven, Keith; Kilsby, C. G.

doi:10.1111/j.1747-6593.2011.00271.x

Cited by 70 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The potential impacts of climate change have been considered in UK water resources planning for a decade (Subak, 2000;Arnell and Delaney, 2006;Charl-ton and Arnell, 2011;Hall et al, 2011). This could be achieved notably thanks to a series of national-scale studies funded by UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) and the Environment Agency (EA) that provided projected changes in monthly river flows and annual average recharge for UK catchments along with practical methods for including such changes in water resource plans (see, e.g., Vidal and Wade, 2007a;von Christierson et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using UKCP09 probabilistic climate information for UK water resource planning

Christierson

Vidal²,

Wade

2012

Journal of Hydrology

103

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Water companies in the United Kingdom have considered climate change in their water resources plans for more than a decade through studies funded by UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR). This paper presents an initial assessment of the impact of the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) on river flows at a national scale for the 2020s under the A1B scenario and the implications for water resource planning. A daily hydrological modelling framework based on two conceptual model structures and the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology has been applied to 70 catchments across the UK. A Latin Hypercube Sampling approach was adopted to handle the probabilistic nature of UKCP09. Results show a decrease in mean annual flow over most of the UK, with negative median values of all monthly changes except in winter over the western and northern mountainous areas. Furthermore the results indicate a high likelihood of a significant decline in summer flows. An analysis of variance shows that the main uncertainty in river flow changes comes from the spread in climate projections. Finally results are found to be consistent with a previous UKWIR assessment based on individual projections from 6 Global Climate Models (GCMs) under the A2 scenario. The reduction in summer low-flows, critical for water resources, appears however more limited with UKCP09. Although most expected changes are within natural variability, the drier conditions overall and the greater spread of results with respect to previous assessments indicates a need for testing the robustness of water resource plans.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using UKCP09 probabilistic climate information for UK water resource planning

Christierson

Vidal²,

Wade

2012

Journal of Hydrology

103

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“…This is also important because when responding to climate change, there is a danger of maladaptation if not all metrics or water resource issues are taken into account. (Barnett and O'Neill 2009) This Info-Gap based approach offers the technical platform to address some of the needed improvements to the current water resources planning process as noted by Hall et al (2011). These Info-Gap based improvements include: the ability to directly evaluate levels of service in terms of more observable outcomes than deployable output (DO) as exemplified by the reservoir ratio (RR), the reservoir risk measure (RRM) and the safety margin deficit (SMD); the integration of uncertainty analysis within the water resource system simulation process; and the ability to evaluate and compare management options over a wide range of plausible futures.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the measurement values that this planning process is based on, WAFU and headroom, are not directly observable, and although they are derived from reservoir levels, some measurement of the frequency of low reservoir levels based on the range of possible supply/demand combinations would offer a less complicated assessment of a management plan's ability to handle uncertainty (cf. Hall et al 2011).…”

Section: Characterising and Quantifying Uncertainty With The Ebsd Appmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each of these steps and the final assessment of different adaptive policy responses to address these impacts contain associated uncertainties (Wilby 2010). The current practice of the water industry in England and Wales to optimise under a set of expected circumstances is no longer enough to plan for a variable future (Hall et al 2011).…”

Section: Sources Of Uncertainty In Water Resources Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using Information-Gap Decision Theory for Water Resources Planning Under Severe Uncertainty

Korteling

Dessai

Kapelan

2012

Water Resour Manage

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Water resource managers are required to develop comprehensive water resources plans based on severely uncertain information of the effects of climate change on local hydrology and future socio-economic changes on localised demand. In England and Wales, current water resources planning methodologies include a headroom estimation process separate from water resource simulation modelling. This process quantifies uncertainty based on only one point of an assumed range of deviations from the expected climate and projected demand 25 years into the future. This paper utilises an integrated method based on Information-Gap decision theory to quantitatively assess the robustness of various supply side and demand side management options over a broad range of plausible futures. Findings show that beyond the uncertainty range explored with the headroom method, a preference reversal can occur, i.e. some management options that underperform at lower uncertainties, outperform at higher levels of uncertainty. This study also shows that when 50 % or more of the population adopts demand side management, efficiency related measures and innovative options such as rainwater collection can perform equally well or better than some supply side options The additional use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis shifts the focus away from reservoir expansion options, that perform best in regards to water availability, to combined strategies that include innovative demand side management actions of rainwater collection and greywater reuse as well efficiency measures and additional regional transfers. This paper illustrates how an Information-Gap based approach can offer a comprehensive picture of Water Resour Manage (2013)

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“…This is unfortunate, both in terms of the complexity of the calculation of such figures and as these terms are 10 widely adopted by legal and regulatory systems. Recently, a risk-based approach has been proposed by Hall et al (2012).…”

Section: Uncertainty Quantification In Drought Hazard Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic uncertainties and natural hazard risk assessment. 1. A review of different natural hazard areas

Beven¹,

Almeida²,

Aspinall³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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This paper discusses how epistemic uncertainties are considered in a number of different natural hazard areas including floods, landslides and debris flows, dam safety, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic ash clouds and pyroclastic flows, and wind storms. In each case it is common practice to treat most uncertainties in the form of aleatory 20 probability distributions but this may lead to an underestimation of the resulting uncertainties in assessing the hazard, consequences and risk. It is suggested that such analyses might be usefully extended by looking at different scenarios of assumptions about sources of epistemic uncertainty, with a view to reducing the element of surprise in future hazard occurrences. Since every analysis is necessarily conditional on the assumptions made about the nature of sources of epistemic uncertainty it is also important to follow the guidelines for good practice suggested in the companion Part 2. 25

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Towards risk‐based water resources planning in England and Wales under a changing climate

Cited by 70 publications

References 10 publications

Using UKCP09 probabilistic climate information for UK water resource planning

Using UKCP09 probabilistic climate information for UK water resource planning

Using Information-Gap Decision Theory for Water Resources Planning Under Severe Uncertainty

Epistemic uncertainties and natural hazard risk assessment. 1. A review of different natural hazard areas

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