Now in an extensively updated fourth edition, this essential text offers a comprehensive survey of all aspects of water resources planning and management. Utilizing an integrated water resources management (IWRM) framework, the authors show how this approach can clarify and help resolve resource management problems in ways that take into account complicated and interconnected social, economic, and environmental needs. Spanning the full planning process, the book considers legal and administrative issues; economic and forecasting factors; water quality, quantity, supply, use and demand; and model applications. The authors’ goal throughout is to provide a practical foundation for improving ecological and human environmental systems for practitioners and students alike.

This open access textbook provides a concise introduction to economic approaches and mathematical methods for the study of water allocation and distribution problems. Written in an accessible and straightforward style, it discusses and analyzes central issues in integrated water resource management, water tariffs, water markets, and transboundary water management. By illustrating the interplay between the hydrological cycle and the rules and institutions that govern today’s water allocation policies, the authors develop a modern perspective on water management. Moreover, the book presents an in-depth assessment of the political and ethical dimensions of water management and its institutional embeddedness, by discussing distribution issues and issues of the enforceability of human rights in managing water resources. Given its scope, the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and engineering, as well as practitioners in the water sector, seeking a deeper understanding of economic approaches to the study of water management.

This book presents case studies that share important experiences regarding Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) in various countries. Following an introduction to theoretical concepts, responsibilities, and challenges, the subsequent chapters address, among other topics, an analysis of policies and regulations for water management in Brazil, the drivers that led California to adapt to the IWRM framework, and the international regulations for water markets and water banking in Australia and Chile. The implications of climate change for water resource systems in Mexico are discussed, as well as management strategies from California that could potentially serve as IWRM adaptation schemes in Mexico. Critical cases from Guanacaste (Costa Rica), and from Zayandehrud River Basin and Lake Urmia (Iran) are reviewed in terms of management practices and solutions. The book also provides an overview of the current availability and use of water resources in South Korea, and discusses the management of and international water law instruments for transboundary groundwater in Africa.

The Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) paradigm has been worldwide recognized as the only feasible way currently available to ensure a sustainable perspective in planning and managing water resource systems. It is the inspiring principle of the Water Framework Directive, adopted by the European Union in 2000, as well as the main reference for all the water related activity of UNESCO in the third world countries. However, very often, real world attempts of implementing IWRM fail for the lack of a systematic approach and the inadequacy of tools and techniques adopted to address the intrinsically complex nature of water systems. This book explores recent and important contributions of System Analysis and Control Theory to the technical application of such paradigm and to the improvement of its theoretical basis. Its prior aim is to demonstrate how the modelling and computational difficulties posed by this paradigm might be significantly reduced by strengthening the efficiency of the solution techniques, instead of weakening the integration requirements. The first introductory chapter provides the reader with a logical map of the book, by formalizing the IWRM paradigm in a nine-step decisional procedure and by identifying the points where the contribution of System Analysis and Control Theory is more useful. The book is then organized in three sections whose chapters analyze some theoretical and mathematical aspects of these contributions or presents design applications. The outstanding research issues on the border between System Analysis and IWRM is depicted in the last chapter, where a pull of scientists and experts, coordinated by Prof. Tony Jakeman describe the foreseeable scenario. The book is based on the most outstanding contributions to the IFAC workshop on Modelling and Control for Participatory Planning and Managing Water Systems held in Venice, September 28- October 1, 2004. That workshop has been conceived and organized with the explicit purpose of producing this book: the maximum length of the papers was unusually long (of the size of a book chapter) and only five long oral presentations were planned each day, thus allowing for a very useful and constructive discussion. - Contributions from the leading world specialists of the field - Integration of technical modelling aspects and participatory decision-making - Good compromise between theory and application

This book reviews the concept, contemporary research efforts and the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). The IWRM concept was established as an international guiding water management paradigm in the early 1990ies and has become a vital approach to solving the problems associated with the topic of water. The book summarizes fourteen comprehensive IWRM research projects with worldwide coverage and analyses their motivations, settings, approaches and implementation of results. Aiming to be an up-to-date interdisciplinary scientific reference, this book provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of contemporary IWRM research, examples of science based implementations and a synthesis of the lessons learnt. It concludes with some major future challenges, the solving of which will further strengthen the IWRM concept.

Sustainable water management is a key environmental challenge of the 21st century. This book presents the very latest studies, methods and innovations for managing our water resources from the first International Conference on Adaptive and Integrated Water Management, held in November 2007 in Basel, Switzerland. The book addresses a wide interdisciplinary audience of scientists and professionals from academia, industry, and those involved in policy making.