Adaptive Water Resource Management for Hydropower and Ecosystem Resilience: A Case Study Using System Dynamics

Water resource scarcity-to-sustainability is a glaring issue with climate change, increases in the population, and industrial development. Hydropower reservoirs provide a sustainable energy production solution against all these odds. Further, these are highly integrated into modern energy grids and are becoming more susceptible to variability in climatic and consumption changes.

so this topic become a global issue today due to the pressure of increasing climate change effects, rapid population growth, and industrialization. Demand for hydropower reservoirs coupled with the energy production and ecosystem services that they provide, has put a lot of stress on these sources. The present approach employs a novel stochastic model using system dynamics to optimize water allocation from hydropower reservoirs while ensuring ecosystem sustainability as well as environmental conservation.

The focus of the study is on Karun Basin. Karun Basin is one of Iran's most important water basins and contains 27 reservoirs of varying sizes and operational priorities. Dynamic interactions among the system components were modeled using the Vensim software platform, taking into consideration 49 scenarios of domestic, industrial, agricultural, and environmental demands as well as expected changes in future climatic and socio-economic conditions this modeling effort undertakes using.

Some important performance indicators, such as temporal and volumetric reliability, were calculated to assess the sustainability of the system for all possible management strategies. It is evident from the results that the traditional policies of water allocation are not sufficient to address modern challenges like increasing demand and climatic variability in available supplies. The proposed model optimizes key allocation strategies that maximize energy production and minimize environmental impacts and is applied to recognize endowments by decision-makers. Most importantly, three critical vulnerabilities were identified in the worst-case scenario for the major reservoirs- Beheshtabad, Vanak, and Shahid. This study highlights the importance of adaptive management in risk reduction and resilience of the system.

The present work demonstrates how system dynamics can be used as a decision-support tool for dual purposes: achieving a balance between energy production and environmental sustainability-potentially because the system may be actionable. It has paid attention to one of the matters increasingly being discussed as an important area of action to advance the integration of ecosystem services in water resource management policies. Future work should expand the model using an online environmental monitoring extension and various other applications in similarly water-stressed areas. The stochastic model and sustainability metrics have developed the approach that policymakers and practitioners can take to meet the increasing challenges of water and energy management. Future research will help improve the model through real-time data collection and investigate its applicability in other water-stressed regions.

Keywords: water resource management, Karun Basin, hydropower optimization, system dynamics, stochastic modeling, climate adaptation, sustainability indicators, Vensim