Supporting operational water management and policy making through scale-specific approaches

Societies, economies and ecosystems depend on sustainable and resilient hydrological services provided by in-tact hydrological systems and processes. These services are defined by the inter-dependencies of various drivers of which land use and land cover changes (LULC) as well as climate change are increasingly dominating, often leading to degraded hydrological services and altered ecosystem dynamics with different levels of societal and economic impacts.

Increasing and more frequent hydrological extremes (floods and droughts) and reduced water availability for various users and uses, often accompanied with increasing water demands, require effective operational water management. Therefore, in-depth knowledge of hydrological processes and their links to LULC, climate changes and other human interventions as well as tools are required to guide water management and policy decisions, such as, increasing water storage in grey and/or green infrastructure, caps on water consumption, or ecosystem restoration. This presentation reviews key processes and introduces the Hydrological Status and Outlook System (HydroSOS) and related assessment and reporting approaches to inform decision and policy-making. Therefore, a scale-specific approach is suggested in which LULC, water use and hydrological processes are embedded in a larger systems approach (including natural and human systems) to guide operational management and policies.