Stochastic simulation of water demands within water resources management

Traditionally, the use of stochastic models within water resources management aim to provide synthetically-generated inflow time series that reproduce the statistical regime of the historical data. On the other hand, the water uses are typically handled as steady-state elements, which follow a constant seasonal pattern over the entire simulation horizon. However, given that the demands are associated with highly uncertain hydroclimatic and socioeconomic factors, they should also be considered as random variables, as made for inflows. Using as example a complex hydrosystem in Western Thessaly, Greece, comprising both surface and groundwater resources to serve irrigation, water supply, environmental and hydroelectric uses, we demonstrate the advantages of a fully stochastic setting of the water management problem over its traditional configuration. Among others, we investigate the use of synthetic demands that are correlated with inflows, given that both are driven by hydroclimatic processes. Data syntheses are employed with the recently introduced AnySim stochastic simulation package (https://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/softinfo/33/).