Water resources management

Sets out the duties and powers of the NRA, part of the Environment Agency, m relation to water resources management, abstraction and impounding, control of pollution of water resources, flood defence. 

Provides scientific and technical support for the Federal Environment Ministry, especially with the preparation of legal and administrative regulations in the fields of air quality control, noise abatement, waste management, water resources management, soil conservation, environmental chemicals, and health-related environmental issues. 

Werritty A (2002) Living with uncertainty climate change, river flows and water resource management in Scotland. Sci Total Environ 294 29 0... 

Kennedy RH, Tundisi JG, Straskrabova V, Lind OT, Hejzlar J (2003) Reservoirs and the limnologist s growing role in sustainable water resource management. Hydrobiologia 504 xi-xii... 

Decision Support Systems for Integrated Water Resources Management Under Water Scarcity... 

Keywords Decision support systems, Integrated water resources management, Water scarcity... 

Further Research in EDSS for Integrated Water Resources Management. I4I... 

Like any other environmental problems, dealing with integrated water resources management (IWRM) under water scarcity is not simple. There are at least five important factors for this complexity ... 

Need of sustainable management (ecological, economical, and social). There is a need for sustainable water resources management, but this can also be the most difficult to recognize. Management should be respectful with the environment, but not at any economical and social prize economically affordable, but not at any environmental and social cost and finally, must seek for social equity (personal and territorial), but not at any environmental and economical cost. Besides there is an interrelation among the different problems related to IWRM, each problem can have different causes and each solution may affect to different problems. 

Chen et al. [24] provide a good review of Al techniques used for modeling environmental systems. Pongracz et al. [25] presents the application of a fuzzy-rule based modeling technique to predict regional drought. Artificial neural networks model have been applied for mountainous water-resources management in Cyprus [26] and to forecast raw-water quality parameters for the North Saskatchewan River [27]. 

Rizzoli et al. [37] propose the application of neuro-dynamic programming for the integrated water resources management. This approach, although faster than stochastic models, is still under study for real applications. 

The management water plan of the Catalan Water Agency and previous works [7, 55, 56] have been used to develop an EDSS for integrated water resources management (EDSS-41WRM). Its objective is to integrate a set of measures of the different specific plans to show that all the proposed measures are able to achieve the water quality objectives. The general scheme of this EDSS is showed in Fig. 2. 

Fig. 2 General scheme of the EDSS under construction for water resources management...

Another significant point raised in Fig. 3 is that the number of references related to the development of DSS to carry out an integrated water resources management is very scarce before 2000s, that is, when the WFD, which emphasizes integrated management as one of the key concerns in river basin management, was launched. 

Despite the fact that EDSS have been successfully used to solve complex enviromnental problems, it seems clear that more research is needed in this area. From our experience during last years, we have identified the still open questions in the development and application of EDSS. It can be foreseen that the research bottlenecks for EDSS for water scarcity and integrated water resources management should be focused on the following issues ... 

Iliadis LS, Maris E (2007) An artificial neural network model for mountainous water-resources management the case of Cyprus mountainous watersheds. Environ Modell Softw 22 1066-1072... 

Castelleti A, Soncini-Sessa R (2007) Bayesian Networks and participatory modelling in water resource management. Environ Modell Softw 22 1075-1088... 

Giordano R, Passarella G, Uricchio VF, Vurro M (2007) Integrating conflict analysis and consensus reaching in a decision support system for water resource management. J Environ... 

Desalination (237) Special issue on Water Resources Management . Symposium Water Resources Management New Approaches and Technologies , Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece, 14—16 June 2007... 

Mysiak J, Giupponi C, Rosato P (2005) Towards the development of a decision support system for water resource management. Environ Modell Softw 20(2) 203-214... 

The effect of water salinity on crop growth is largely of osmotic nature. Osmotic pressure is related to the total salt concentration rather than the concentration of individual ionic elements. Salinity is commonly expressed as the electric conductivity of the irrigation water. Salt concentration can be determined by Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) or by Electrical Conductivity (EC). Under a water scarcity condition, salt tolerance of agricultural crops will be the primordial parameter when the quality of irrigation water is implicated for the integrated water resources management [10]. 

Idris, A. and Abdullah, A.G.L., Leachate Treatment Using Aerobic Biofilm Reactor, Proc. JSPS-VCC Seminar on Water Resource Management, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, 2001. 

Water resource management strategies need to balance water supply and demand, particularly in the context of droughts or floods, and contend with problems such as diffuse and point source pollution, poor water quality and ecosystem degradation, all within local political and socio-economic frameworks. As water use in one location may influence water quality and availability in another, it is becoming... 

To explore the viability of supplementing existing water resources in semi-arid areas with alternative sources of water that could be exploited in the context of an integrated water resources management approach. 

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