Understanding of hydrological risk is increasing but much of it remains non-actionable. Consequently, interventions are seldom informed by the latest insights, limiting their effectiveness and resilience, especially in a non-stationary world. The co-production of knowledge in hydrology can result in more salient, useful, and usable outcomes that are used to directly inform decisions. Co-production is an interactive and complex process founded on relationships between science, society, practice, and policy. We are applying this approach to generate locally relevant understanding, evidence, and action on flood risk in Tamale, a city of ~500,000 people in northern Ghana. A team of citizens, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers from a range of disciplines are working together to understand the drivers and distribution of flood risk, as well as the effects of top-down and citizen-led adaptation. Knowledge is generated and validated in a series of stages and cycles and operationalized in different modes for different users. Whilst this is an ongoing process which continues to evolve, in this talk I will share lessons and experiences from the co-production approach in Tamale that may be translatable to other contexts. Co-production approaches represent tangible frameworks to improve the science-policy-practice nexus in hydrology and water resources management, and sharing good examples can expedite adoption.

How to cite: Howard, B., Awuni, C., Berkhout, F., Agyei-Mensah, S., and Buytaert, W.: Co-production could improve the science-policy-practice nexus in hydrology: lessons from co-producing knowledge on flood risk in Tamale, Ghana, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-21719, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21719, 2024.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is an intergovernmental United Nations (UN) agency specialised in weather, climate and water-related infrastructure and services. It enables international cooperation at a global scale to promote scientific research based on the integrated Earth system approach, and facilitates the global exchange of Earth observation data and products.

The global agenda on sustainable development is strongly intertwined with intensifying hydrological extremes and issues of water availability and quality impacting the environment, food and energy security. The UN 2023 Water Conference further reiterated the role of water at the heart of climate action which evolved as a powerful opportunity to create innovative ways of working with many and diverse stakeholders. Thus, handling of hydrology at institutions/organisations requires effective cross-coordination and interdisciplinary approaches within not only related disciplines but also across science, policy and practice sectors.

The Hydrology, Water Resources and Cryosphere Branch at WMO’s Services Department contributes to strengthening the Science-Policy-Practice (SPP) interface through its various activities ranging from the State of Global Water Resources Report to the Hydrology Coordination Panel. The WMO Hydrology Action Plan and the WMO Hydrological Research Strategy (2022‑2030) have special emphasis on science-informed operational hydrology and effective water science-policy. In particular, the recently established unit “Global Processes and Water Policy” is aimed at highlighting the role of hydrology at the intergovernmental level, on platforms such as the Conference of the Parties (COP), the supreme decision-making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In this talk, we will introduce ongoing efforts of the Hydrology, Water Resources and Cryosphere Branch at WMO, and share our experiences working towards the SPP nexus.

How to cite: Dogulu, N., Franke, N., Kim, H., Mishra, S., and Uhlenbrook, S.: Doing Hydrology forward for Science-Policy-Practice nexus at the intergovernmental level: the case of World Meteorological Organization (WMO) , EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-21744, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21744, 2024.

Due to increased climate uncertainty, political instability and economic turbulence, many interstate river basins are in the midst of transforming their water governance strategies to embrace the aforementioned challenges. A prerequisite of achieving such transformation is to understand various types of rules that build the water governance structure of the river basins. Therefore, we demonstrate an institutional analysis approach that combines the institutional grammar and the institutional analysis and development framework’s rule typology to identify the various type of formal rules regulating the water resources in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The institutional feature and key actors of the basin’s water governance structure under different water governance situations are also explored. The approach is built on an institutional content analysis tool named institutional grammar and the institutional analysis and development framework’s rule typology. Using the approach, we dissect the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement of Australian Government’s Water Act 2007 to generate data for institutional analysis and subsequently, identifying the number and types of rules that form MDB’s water governance structure. We identify that MDB’s water governance structure stresses on choice rules and information rules that regulate actors’ choice of actions and the flow of information. Nevertheless, there are rules that only present in certain water governance situations, which indicating its institutional features. For instance, the position rules that create the basin’s water resource administrative units are found only in the action situation of administration. The scope rules that delineate the physical outcome to be produced are found dominating the action situations of water resource appropriation. The co-thinking type of aggregation rules that control the requirement of stakeholder consultation are mostly found in the situation of basin planning. In conclusion, the proposed approach able to generate the quantitative and qualitative information that can be used to analyze the complex structure of water resource governance in a river basin. Therefore, the research contributes to the development of a systematic water institution analysis tool.

How to cite: Lai, C. H. and Zhao, J.: Applying institutional grammar to analyze the institutional structure of water resources governance in interstate river basins, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-1806, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-1806, 2024.

Openness, transparency and reproducibility are terms which have found their way into the scientific community, including hydrology. Recently, a set of principles and guidance on Open Science for hydrology researchers was introduced by Hall et al. (2022). However, an integrative and inclusive vision, by and for all research stakeholders in hydrology, with respect to science-informed services (practice) and decision making (policy) is currently missing.

Open Hydrology, in essence, refers to the conduct of hydrological research and delivery of hydrological services based on principles and approaches of Open Science. Open Hydrology can be an effective enabler of improved Science-Policy-Practice (SPP) interface by strengthening the role of hydrological sciences. Furthermore, adoption of open, transparent, and participatory approaches to hydrology can ultimately lead to wider accessibility (in support of inclusivity and equity), and more trust in science for all research stakeholders, including the society, thus facilitating reliable decision and policy making.

Our contribution highlights the potential of Open Hydrology for members of (water) research communities and infrastructures, hydrological service providers, research administrators and facilitators of research, national and regional governmental institutions in charge of water resources management, publishers, policy makers and funders, citizen science groups and initiatives. We will share examples of open data, open source, open education, open infrastructure, and open publishing initiatives, resources and tools while discussing their transformative potential for the SPP nexus.

Hall, C. A., Saia, S. M., Popp, A. L., Dogulu, N., Schymanski, S. J., Drost, N., van Emmerik, T., and Hut, R.: A hydrologist's guide to open science, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 647–664, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-647-2022, 2022.

How to cite: Dogulu, N., Dietrich, S., Hall, C., and Verbist, K.: Open Hydrology for the Science-Policy-Practice interface: why and how, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-21738, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21738, 2024.

Water managers and planners working within complex social-environmental systems are challenged with difficult choices when prioritizing interventions to manage water quality and reduce pollution from point and non-point sources. These choices are particularly important in low-resource environments where public funds must be carefully allocated. To support policy analysis for water quality management, a water quality modeling and policy consultation exercise was performed by Deltares, TU Delft, and government partners in the Brantas River basin, East Java, Indonesia. The modeling exercise combined mapped pollution source estimates for domestic wastewater and agricultural runoff with rainfall-runoff and pollution transport and fate models to demonstrate estimated impacts of various source-reduction scenarios on BOD loads along the main river. These outputs were used to inform deliberations regarding options to reduce water pollution and improve river health at a basin level. The model's ability to identify hotspots and assess the impact of targeted pollution reductions offers a powerful visual tool for policymakers to formulate geographically targeted interventions and identify the specific pollution source reductions that would yield the most substantial improvements. The case demonstrates the practical applications of scenario-building as an invitation for policy-makers to visually consider alternative interventions and focuses on lessons learned regarding capacities required to perform such activities, stakeholder engagement to build workable and meaningful model from an administrative perspective, and practical considerations for applying data-driven approaches to prioritization. 

How to cite: Houser, S., Geerling, G., Pijcke, G., Pramana, R., and Ertsen, M.: Enhancing Decision Support through Hydrological Modeling and Scenario-Building: A Case Study in the Brantas River Basin, Indonesia, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16221, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16221, 2024.

Numerical models play a vital role in representing geohydrological processes and informing the management of surface and subsurface water flows. Yet, these models have limitations, such as not being able to determine the behavior and responses of water users, and the resulting pressures on water bodies via technological, land and water allocation choices. Microeconomic models can aptly complement geohydrological models due to their ability to quantify land and water use choices. Several studies have seeked to combine the strengths of water and human system models using modular or holistic couplings. In a recent review, assess 198 integrated human and water systems models and find that in 88 of these models the integration focuses either on the surface water or the groundwater system. As shown by (Salmani et al.,2023), Simulating surface water or groundwater alone may not accurately represent water system dynamics, leading to important modeling errors that may cascade to human systems and lead to bias forecasts.

This study develops a modular hydro-economic model that explicitly models surface water and groundwater systems. The water system is populated by SWAT+gwflow, which integrates the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT+) with the groundwater module gwflow; while the human system is populated with a microeconomic positive mathematical programming (PMP) model that represents the behavior of irrigators. The proposed model is illustrated with an application to the overlapping Cega-Eresma-Adaja sub-basin and Arenales Aquifer in Spain.

The model setup is implemented in two steps. At first, the PMP is calibrated for each Agricultural Water Demand Unit, the basic irrigation water use unit in Spain, using observed land and water use data and socioeconomic data for the period (2015). Then, the SWAT+gwflow model is calibrated for 43 subbasins and 1247 HRUs from 1990 to 2020. This model was calibrated and validated in 14 observation gauges and 29 observation wells to evaluate the streamflow and head of the aquifer. The model showed a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of 0.65-0.85 and coefficient of determination of 0.7-0.9 for all stations in the baseline, indicating good simulation. The simulated groundwater head showed good agreement with observed well data, with a mean absolute error of less than 0.5 m in the baseline and other scenarios. Moreover, the rivers were found to be heavily dependent on groundwater discharge to streams.

Once the two models are calibrated, according to the river ministry policies derived from the historical droughts graph, a series of simulations in which irrigated crops land and water use are constrained across AWDUs are run in the PMP model in urgent or alert situations. The resultant crop portfolio in the PMP simulation is replicated in the SWAT+gwflow, and the water use and management practices updated to match those of the PMP. Finally, simulations are run with the SWAT+gwflow to assess the impact of land and water reallocations by irrigators on the surface water and groundwater systems. Results show that decreasing the amount of land and water used for irrigated crops can increase stream flow and lead to more normal conditions while increasing the portfolio of rainfed crops.

How to cite: Salmani, H., Gil-García, L., and González-López, H.: Integrating hydrological and economic modeling to assess the impacts of adaptation policies, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-8661, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8661, 2024.

Unreliable and unequal public water supply already affects around one billion urban residents around the world. In many cities, informal water markets have emerged to fill public supply gaps by delivering water via tanker trucks, depleting scarce rural groundwater sources. A quintessential example of this can be found in the highly water-scarce country of Jordan. In Jordan, intermittent public water supply and rapid urban growth have led to a surge of uncontrolled groundwater abstractions by pervasive illegal tanker water markets.

Here, we use a rigorous coupled human-natural systems model to assess a range of policy options for mitigating the groundwater impacts of informal water markets in Jordan with regards to their effectiveness and impacts on household water access. The model represents spatially distributed feedbacks between Jordan’s water sector and groundwater resources in country-wide scenario simulations until 2050. We find that investments in supply augmentation have limited impact on tanker water demand, unless they are combined with a more equitable and efficient distribution of public water supply. Jordan’s current policy of closing illegal tanker wells is found to impede the access of water-stressed households to tanker deliveries. Approaches for the legalization of tanker water markets provide more efficient policy options. Policy design is shown to be decisive for safeguarding household water access. Our findings show that understanding the role of informal water markets in urban water supply can be critical for reconciling sustainable groundwater management and household water security.

How to cite: Klassert, C., Yoon, J., Sigel, K., Klauer, B., Talozi, S., Lachaut, T., Selby, P., Knox, S., Avisse, N., Tilmant, A., Harou, J., Mustafa, D., Medellín-Azuara, J., Bataineh, B., Zhang, H., Gawel, E., and Gorelick, S.: Addressing the groundwater impacts of informal water markets – coupled human-natural systems modeling of policy options for Jordan, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16397, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16397, 2024.

The International Commission on Human-Water Feedbacks of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) focuses on better understanding the feedbacks between humans and water over decadal and centennial time scales. We are inclusive and interdisciplinary, inviting members from all research fields interested in this topic, including social sciences, economics, engineering, hydrology, etc.

Societies respond to hydrometeorological hazards by developing management measures, which can have a major, if not dominant, influence on risk and water ressources. For example, natural river systems in Europe have been greatly affected by the construction of dams and canals, which have altered the course of rivers and allowed the urbanisation of flood plains. However, the long-term effects of such measures are largely unknown due to complex interactions with other developments in the human-water system, such as climate change or socio-economic development. An example of a hypothesised long-term feedback mechanism is the construction of reservoirs for irrigation and the resulting population growth, which increases the exposure and vulnerability of society and leads to the construction of even more reservoirs, thus creating a feedback loop. There is an urgent need to understand the long-term dynamics of the human-water system in order to successfully implement climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, post-disaster recovery decisions, and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The aim of this presentation is to present and further motivate community activities that aim to better understand human-water feedbacks.

How to cite: Kreibich, H., Haeffner, M., Krüger, T., Pande, S., and Van Loon, A.: Understanding Human-Water feedbacks, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16968, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16968, 2024.

Climate change impacts water resource users across various sectors. In almost all biomes, socioeconomic patterns are barriers to accelerating the transition toward sustainable lifestyles, aiming to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and improving the adaptation to mitigate hydrological risks. One strategy is to understand the operation of multipurpose reservoirs, which play a crucial role for guaranteeing water security. However, these systems face challenges on policy strategies due to the high number of variables, strong coevolution of change drivers, and underlying constraints of objective functions, in the pursuit of reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience. Overcoming these challenges is essential to decrease vulnerability and improve resilience in water management practices. These challenges are exacerbated in developing countries due to inadequate measurement of these factors, coupled with a lack of comprehensive hydrological information and operational strategies necessary to effectively manage the water demands of the energy, food, and ecosystem sectors. Thus, the objective of this study is to understand the patterns of reservoir operation in hydrological regions of Brazil and the problems around the absence of appropriate indicators to improve water security and adaptive management. This will be done by collecting information of the databases established by National Water and Sanitation Agency of Water (Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento – ANA), which is legally liable for implementing the National Water Resources Management System (SINGREH), created to ensure the sustainable use of rivers and lakes for the current and future generations in Brazil. The data collection will include the fixed and occasional demands associated with the reservoirs, as well as the data related to their water supply. Furthermore, watershed management plans, water allocation permit, characterization of dam structures and reservoir monitoring data will give support for the future analyses. Through an investigation centered on Brazil's hydrological regions and the National Water and Sanitation Agency, this study aims evaluate quantitative indicators for water security and adaptive management, we aim to optimize the operations of multipurpose reservoirs, enhancing their resilience in face of the environmental changes. Our goal is to propose operational indices that can assist the monitoring and implementation of national policies for ensuring water security and adaptive management of these reservoirs under environmental change.

Keywords: WEFE nexus, multipurpose reservoirs, adaptive water security, climate change.

How to cite: da Silva, P. G. C., Benso, M. R., Sankarankutty, R., Silva, G. M. E., Mendiondo, E. M., and Krol, M. S.: Analysis of reservoir security indicators regarding water supply for energy, food, and ecosystem sectors on a climate change perspective, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-816, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-816, 2024.

For sustainable use of groundwater, it is important to know the past and current water balance and the impact of changes in land and water use for working with stakeholder collectively. In order to understand these issues, a distributed hydrological model that includes the key processes of the regional hydrological system is considered to be a powerful tool, as it enables us to understand the impact of human activities at any given site.

In the Kumamoto region, which is almost 100% dependent on groundwater for drinking water, there have been attempts to understand groundwater flow and water balance qualitatively and quantitatively. For example, groundwater levels have been monitored for about 30 years or more, mainly by the local government, to understand the current status of groundwater in the Kumamoto area. Based on these data, a multi-stakeholder group including government, academia and the private sector has developed an integrated surface-subsurface model to reproduce long-term changes in groundwater levels (Kawasaki et al., 2023).

This presentation will present the results of several simulations using this model of possible future scenarios in the Kumamoto region, which identify key factors for sustainable groundwater use in the Kumamoto region.

How to cite: Kawasaki, M., Sawada, M., Tawara, Y., Kobayashi, T., Fukuoka, Y., Tada, K., Shimada, J., Hosono, T., Katsuya, K., Shin-no, K., Koga, H., and Nakahori, Y.: Use of simulations to evaluate the balance between recharge and pumping to contribute to the development of policies for sustainable groundwater use in the Kumamoto area, southern Japan, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-10090, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-10090, 2024.