The first HWR seminar of the Fall 2010 semester is next Wednesday at 4PM in JWH 206.
For more information about future seminars please go to the HWR seminar calendar.
Hydrologic Risk Transfer Models as Adapting Strategies for Changing Scenarios of Water Vulnerability
Abstract
– "Strategies for sustainable development depict a learning transition from uncertainty analysis to uncertainty management, encouraging new rules, attitudes and scenarios capable of being profited in water problems" (Mendiondo & Valdes, 2002). Hydrologic risks play an important role in the management of predicted changes of the water balance of critical watersheds. These risks are expected to increase under exploding demands, land use and climate variability. At the South American scale, for instance, flood risk management performs an promissory niche of ca. R$ 80 billion a year. In the handling on these risks it is necessary to propose a pool of adapting measures which incorporate tradeoffs being accepted not only at scientific circuits but also in decision making steps with stakeholders. Adapting measures to hydrologic risks are particularly relevant at watersheds threatened by climate extremes, especially those rivers being highly impacted by progressive transformation, in North America and South America (Mendiondo & Valdes, 2002) with ungauged or poor gauged basins’ responses (Sivapalan et al, 2003). To further mitigate preventable water disasters, mitigate related catastrophes and transfer those growing water risks, new insurance models, herewith known as Hydrological Risk Transfer Models (HRTM), are proposed coupling hydrologic models with economic layouts regarding a scenario approach. Novel HRTMs are derived on long-term scenarios and modeling runs of possible climate and land use changes (Mendiondo et al, 2005). Other works with HRTMs relate to resilience and demonstrate how scientific methods can be merged into feasible strategies of risk transfer at the watershed scale with vulnerable sectors and stakeholders (Mendiondo, 2010). HRTMs are part of a whole concept of how resilience and vulnerability should be addressed by watershed’s societies who recognize that adapting measures to potential climate change risk are feasible. New challenges proposes more complete approaches to environmental insurance models through HRTMs and the way to assess the vulnerability-tradeoffs to the overall resilience within the river basin scale.
The objective of this Seminar is twofold: firstly, to link Global Circulation Model outputs to regional HRTMs at representative watersheds; secondly, to explore several how combinations of hypothesis testing on climate change and land-use scenarios should elicit water insurance models in order to propose new indexes of water vulnerability and resilience, adaptation thresholds of more vulnerable society’s sectors and mitigation policies of the whole economical system. The purpose is preliminary to approach case studies at representative biomes of Subtropical and Semi-Arid areas, thereby underpinning yardsticks of how to replicate intensive HRTM runs. Future scenarios from GCMs, with uncertainty intervals between period of years 2000-2050 and 2050-2100, will be the inputs to HRTMs, acting as a dynamic ‘fund tank’ of the insurance device. New climate change scenarios runs through Brazilian CPTEC-ETA model, globally-constrained by either HadCM3 or ECHAM4, from baseline scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 for the period 1960 2100, also include indexes of extreme precipitation, temperature and water scarcity indexes here used. To address resilience and vulnerability indexes, the insurance model emulate stochastically-based scenarios based upon ‘fund tank’ solvency as well as time-averaged efficiency throughout long-term scenarios of land-use. Then climate change and land-use scenarios could be tested as end-points or mixed situations which generate a wide range of possibilities. The methodology could be assessed at representative biomes with transboundary constraints in Latin and North America: (1) subtropical Piracicaba-Capivari-Jundiai watershed (PCJ, Brazil), (2) water scarce Sao Francisco watershed (SF, Brazil), (3) transitional Andean-Amazon biome of Vilcanota-Urubamba watershed (Machu Picchu, Peru) and discuss which possibilities for using at Salt River Basin USA. Consequently, the approach outlines replication steps for: (a) the adaptation of different society's story-lines scenarios of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, (b) a stochastic bootstrapping of M-scenarios, (c) climate change scenarios, (d) fuzzy-level risk coverage of insurance for water scarcity, (e) a prospective window timeframe horizon per scenario run, encompassing a great amount of combinations of flexible, adaptive insurance schemes exploring HRTMs either at a lumped or distributed scale of the watershed. Finally, institutional and logistical facilities are being presented to support twinning graduate programs of water resources between of University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and SAHRA/UnivArizona, USA, with exchange of scholars and students to study and visit Brazilian demonstrative pilot projects of water resilient events of World Soccer Cup 2014 and Olympic Games 2016, profiting from global networks of IPCC, WMO, UNEP-FI and UNDP-CapNet.
Short CV
EMM, 42, Water Resources Engineer from Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina. Master of Science in Civil Engineering and Doctor in Water Resources and Environment of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Senior Researcher at Center for Environmental System Research at University of Kassel, Germany. Since 2002 he is lecturing professor at Department of Hydraulics and Sanitation of Sao Carlos College of Engineering, University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos, Brazil. R&D missions in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Experiences and vivid works on adaptation strategies of water resources systems, emerging hydrologic theory and prediction in ungauged basins, urban waters, hydraulic uncertainties, ecohydrology, river restoration, future scenarios of water extremes, flood insurance, radar-based flash-flood nowcasting, water vulnerability at semi-arid regions, water pricing related to water footprint. Invited fellow of international and regional inititatives: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Brazilian Panel of Climate Change, Reviewer of AR5/Braz IPCC, Academic Member of UNEPFI and Board Member of Brazilian Network of Capacity Building on Water Resources, CapNet Brazil. Hobbies: field hydrology during travels and coaching students for water innovation.
