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Please note that this session was withdrawn and is no longer available in the respective programme. This withdrawal might have been the result of a merge with another session.

HS5.10

Water infrastructure risks under climate variability and change
Convener: Xun Sun  | Co-Conveners: Michelle Ho , Jun Xia , Bruno Merz 

Water infrastructures, such as dams, reservoirs and coastal defense structure, play a critical role in establishing and sustaining economic and societal activities, including water storage and supply, flood protection, and energy production. However, most existing water infrastructure were designed with neither knowledge of devastating floods and prolonged droughts detected in multi-centennial paleoclimate records, consideration of projected climate change, sea level rise, nor consideration of optimal reservoir operation across large-scale regions. This suggests that existing water infrastructure and current operational procedures may at risk of failure under both natural and anthropogenic climate variability. For instance failure may include inability to adequately control floods, storm surge and subsequent damage to infrastructure or insufficient water storage during prolonged droughts. This session aims at discussing the risks in the operation and design of water infrastructures, which covers the following topics:
- Water infrastructure vulnerability informed by paleoclimate records
- Dam/reservoir operation strategy for water supply, flood protection, energy production under climate variability and change
- Large scale climate influences on water infrastructure management
- Mathematic and Statistical modeling for the prediction and assessments of water infrastructure risks
- Optimization of multiple dams at large spatial scales
- Water risk management and solutions for national and global water stress