H179-01
What does integration mean for assessment of water availability? Enabling good practice, team science, pathway reflexivity, scale decisions and uncertainty assessment

Tuesday, 15 December 2020: 10:00
Virtual
Anthony John Jakeman1, Sondoss Elsawah2, Joseph H.A. Guillaume3, Takuya Iwanaga3 and Fateme Zare4, (1)Australian National University, Institute for Water Futures and Integrated Catchment Assessment and Management Centre, Canberra, ACT, Australia, (2)University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, (3)Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia, (4)University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Assessment of water availability and supporting decisions as to its allocation among competing uses has many dimensions to be considered and integrated. Foremost are the contextual system settings: the environmental and socio-economic issues of concern, the parties to involve, and the governance arrangements including intervention opportunities and constraints. Once these settings are framed, appropriate model-based processes can be considered to manage the system complexities and facilitate exploration of scenarios and their outcomes of interest.

The metadisciplines of socio-hydrology, social-ecological systems and integrated assessment (IA) have much in common to contribute to this integration, though the emphasis of the first two has been more about understanding the dynamics between human and other systems whereas IA and the related notion of Integrated Water Resources Management tend to embrace more the decision sciences and the role of policy and making trade-offs. IA also focuses on the development of the capabilities and competencies to provide sustained improvements to the processes of decision support and social learning.

This contribution will emphasize the role of good practices in conducting an integrated assessment exercise for water availability settings, underlining attention throughout the framing, assessment and engagement steps, and the accompanying sets of generic questions that should be addressed. Enabling factors are the lessons from team science, and the notion of reflexivity on pathway decisions at each fork that make the exercise process more effective and efficient. Just as crucial are methodological and particularly scale choices in the modelling. Finally, a holistic attention to uncertainty sources in all its guises throughout the process, not just in the formulated models, is crucial. These aspects will be illustrated with a case study in a catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia.

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