SYSTEMS PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

System: Definition of a system (Dooge, 1973)

“any structure, device, scheme or procedure,
real or abstract, that interrelates in a given time
reference, an input, cause or stimulus, of
matter, energy, or information, and an output,
effect or response of information, energy or
matter.”
System:
◦ Set of objects which interact in a regular, interdependent
manner
◦ A collection of various factors arranged in an ordered form with
some purpose or goal
A system is characterized by:
◦ A system boundary: Rule that determines whether an element is
a part of the system or the environment
◦ Statement of input and output interactions with the environment
◦ Statement of interrelationships between various elements of the
system called feedback.
State of the system: a Conditions that indicates the activity in the
system at a given time e.g.. water level in a reservoir, depth of flow.
 A system is any structure, device, scheme, or procedure, real or
abstract, that interrelates in a given time reference, an input,
cause, or stimulus, of matter, energy, or information, and an
output, effect or response, of information, energy or matter
(comprehensive)
 Analysis is the act of studying or examining something in detail,
in order to discover or understand more about it
 System analysis: Arriving at the management decisions based on the
systematic and efficient organization and analysis of relevant
information

 Examples:

 university with its various departments,

a central government with its regional governments,
a river basin with all its tributaries
 Some Systems in WRPM
• Watershed
• Aquifer
 System • Development area
Parameters, 𝛽 • Detention Basin

Transformation
Input, I function Output, Q
Q(t) =ῼ (α, 𝛽) * I (t)

Policies or Controls, α
 Time-varying system: the output response change with
time
 Time-invariant system: in the time invariant system the
input-output relationship does not depend on the time of
application of input, i.e., the output is the same for the same
input at all times. E.g. UH
 Deterministic system: a system in which no randomness is
involved in the development of future state of the system
 Stochastic system: in stochastic system the input-output
relationship is probabilistic

 Continuous-time systems: in continuous system the

change in the system takes place continuously

 Discrete time systems: is one that changes abruptly at

discrete points in time
Water resources system management influences and improve the interaction

of three interdependent subsystems:

1. Natural river subsystem (NRS) : Physical, chemical and biological

processes takes place

2. Socio-economic subsystem (SES): Human activities related to the use

of the natural river system

3. Administrative and institutional subsystem (AIS): Administration,

legislation and regulation, where the decision, planning and

management processes take place (Loucks et al., 2005)

Inadequate attention to one

subsystem can reduce the

effect of any work done to

improve the performance of

the others
• Water Resources Planning (WRP) serves Water Resources

Management (WRM).

• WRP addresses the functioning of the Water Resources System

(WRS) in its integrated whole, taking into consideration its social,

economic and environmental functions.

• Planning (the formulation of development and management plans

and policies) is an important and often indispensable means to

support and improve operational management.

• Reducing the frequency and/or severity of the adverse consequences of droughts,
floods and excessive pollution

• Identification and evaluation of alternative measures that may increase the

available water supplies or hydropower, improve recreation and/or navigation, and
enhance the quality of water and aquatic ecosystems

• Provide safe, reliable and affordable drinking water to people without causing
damage to environment

• Allocate scarce water resources among competing users in an equitable manner

• Maximize net social and economic benefits from the operation of a multipurpose
dam while minimizing the environmental damage
 Single purpose plan
 Multi purpose plan
 Master plan – phase development plan. Single or
multi on certain geographic area for specific time
 Comprehensive or integrated plan - It is multi-
unit, multipurpose and multi objective plan.
 It include economical, financial, political, social, and
environmental objectives.
 Consider both structural and non-structural
(institutional) alternative.
 It does not include feasibility studies of individual
projects
 International Plan
 National Plan
 Regional Plan
 District plan
 River Basin Plan:- these basin or catchment wide plans
provide the constitutional framework for allocating and
managing water for both human use and environmental
flow requirements.
 It use the hydrological boundaries as the planning limits.
 Generally, River Basin is considered most suitable spatial
scale for water resources planning (from hydrological
perspective) Within a basin, it is important to consider:
◦ Upstream-downstream impacts

◦ Up-scaling and downscaling issues (e.g. from a farmer

field to cropping system to catchment to basin and vice versa)

◦ Administrative boundaries
 Outside of a basin, there are also many
important considerations:

 National/country perspective

 Inter-basin transfers

 International context

 Virtual water
Top down approach (command and control approach):
Planning process typically dominated by professionals
Very less stakeholder participation
The approach assumes that one or more institutions have the
ability and authority to develop and implement the plan, in
other words, that will oversee and manage the coordinated
development and operation of the basin’s activities that affect the
surface and ground waters of the basin.
Widely practiced in past century-still practiced in many
developing countries
However, becoming less desirable and acceptable over time
Bottom –up approach (grass-root approach).
Within the past two decades water resources
planning and management processes have
increasingly involved the active participation of
interested stakeholders – those affected in any
way by the management of the water and land
resources.
Bottom-up planning must strive to achieve a
common or ‘shared’ vision of goals and priorities
among all stakeholders.
 Why the need for better water management?
 It is significant to note that Ethiopia has plenty
water resources but there is no proper control and
management over the water resources
 Thus, water resources planning & management
techniques are used to:
 Determine the measures that should be
taken to meet water demands
 Enhance water and land resources
 Water resources are developed or managed for
the following purposes:
 Irrigation development
 Domestic and non domestic water supply
 Commercial fishing and aquatic
 Thermal-power plant cooling
 Hydroelectric power generation
Flood control and flood loss management

Navigation, recreation and drainage purpose

Erosion and sedimentation control

Water quality management

Economic development
 People from different professional backgrounds
tend to view water resources planning and
management differently.
 To the ecologist, it is connected with the
deterioration of ecosystems, the land
degradation, pollution and destruction of
wetlands.
 To the water engineer, it is related to dams,
reservoirs, flood protection, diversions, river
training work and water supply treatment.
To the lawyer, the main issues are the
ownership of water, the system of water rights,
the priority of use, the water legislation and
international water law.
To the economist, it is concerned with
economic efficiency, cost recovery and attainment
of national objectives such as:
• Stimulation of economic growth
• Poverty alleviation
• Employment and food security
 In fact, it includes all these point of views thus it is
multidisciplinary.
 WRPM is a process including all activities of
planning, design, construction and operation of
water resources systems.
 The goals of water resources planning may be
attained by the use of:
 Structural measures(construction of structures)
 Nonstructural measures(flood warning systems)
 The term purpose, objective and goal have
similar meanings in ordinary usage, they are
different in water resources planning.
 Purpose has referred to a category of water
needs and problems (municipal & industrial
water supply, and flood control)
 Goal: some water resource planners believe it is
useful to consider a goal as a general societal aim
such as the improvement of the quality of life
 An objective is more specific (monetary or)
maximization of net benefit)
 The phases usually involved in the planning and
Management of water resources project are:
Establishment of goals and objectives
 Problem identification and analysis
 Solution identification and impact assessment
Formulation of alternatives and analysis
Recommendations including priorities and
schedules for implementation
 Decisions
Implementation/organizations for action, if
required
 Operation and management

 The methods of water resources planning range

from fairly simple techniques to sophisticated
mathematical optimization approaches.
 The selection of methods for a planning effort
depends on:
The type of project
The formal requirement of the planning
organization
The available personnel
Money
Equipment for investigations
The abilities of the planning staff
 Planning activities (e.g. flood control project) are:
Management coordination
Analysis of basic data-maps, aerial photos and
stream flow data
Determination of needs for flood control
Consideration of alternative ways of meeting
needs
Studies for reservoir
Studies for local protective works (construction
of retaining walls, river shaping and paving)
Formulation of optimal structural and non
structural measures
Economic and financial analyses
Sociological impact assessment
Public information participation programs
Report preparation
 The list of tasks for the above example of flood
control project has at least the following
specialists:
Engineers
Urban/regional land planning specialists and
Architects,
Economic and financial specialists
Environmental specialists
Sociologists
Real estate and relocation specialists
Public information specialists
Report production specialists
 In water supply & demand assessment forecasts,
population and water demands are necessary
ingredients.
 They are important for determining the location
and types of projects
 Estimates of population and water demands can be
based on an interpretation of data on historical
trends.
 Water resources need planning prior to development
Stages in Planning Water Resources Project
 First Stage: Preliminary (Reconnaissance) Survey
 It consists of office studies, field studies, and the
preparation of a report.
 The report should answer the following questions:
– Is it likely a feasible project?
-What are approximate estimates of volume and
cost?
– What additional studies are needed to confirm
feasibility?
 Basic materials include:
– Maps and photographs (topographic maps, land
surveys, country and city tax maps, transportation maps,
aerial photographs),
– Geologic and soil surveys data, climate data, stream
flow and ground water records, quality and sediment
measurements,
– Information on ecological and environmental
condition data
This work are normally engineers and geologists
however it may also include personnel environmentalists
and other specialists.
 If the project owner determines that additional studies are
necessary based on the preliminary report, a feasibility
report will be prepared
 The feasibility report should include the following:
– Descriptions and analyses of the data
– Confirmation of construction feasibility based on:
• Additional field and laboratory investigations,
• Studies of project arrangement and individual project
features,
• Analysis of construction methods (sources of construction
materials, access to the project site, diversion of water
during construction, etc.)
 The feasibility report should include the following:
 Final recommendation for arrangement of project
works and preliminary plants to determine:
– The quantities of construction,
– A reliable cost estimate and discussions of the
design criteria
 Construction schedule showing the timing and costs
of project features
 Economic analyses of the project
 Financial analyses projecting the year-by-year costs,
revenues and grants for the project
 The feasibility report should include the following:
– Plants for financing and managing the
construction and operation of the project
– Institutional and legal requirements
– Assessments of the environmental and social
impacts of construction and operation studies
– To confirm construction feasibility and make
reliable estimates of project cost, the work in this
phase consists of designs in addition to planning
studies
 Final Design and Preparation of Contract
documents include plans, drawings and
specifications which are sufficiently detailed to
obtain tenders (bids) from qualified construction
and equipment contractors.
 The contract documents also contain additional
information on the responsibilities of the
project owner and the contractor.
 The sponsor/owner and engineers review the
tenders made by contractors

 Contractor tenders are usually ranked after

weighting the factors in order to determine
which tenders are in the sponsor’s best
interest, and awards are made accordingly.
 Additional detailed drawings needed during
construction are prepared by the sponsor’s
engineers and by the contractors subject to the
sponsor’s approval

 Payments to the contractors are usually made

based on measurements of work in progress
or completed, in accordance with the terms of
the contract documents.
 The sponsor/owner may employ outside
engineers and other consultants to assist in
operation for a limited period, train operators,
prepare manuals for operation and maintenance
and monitor the performance of the various
features (structural, hydrologic, hydraulic, etc.).

 Studies of operating rules may continue as

experience develops (e.g. reservoir operation)
Introduction: Future Projections
 All the water resources development projects are
usually planned to meet water demand
 Projections of demand should not be made as
simple extrapolations of the past growth rate.
 Social, economic and technological
development of the region may cause significant
changes in trends and therefore the future
growth rate may be quite different from the past
growth rate.
 The development process for water resources
project cooperation of formulation,
construction and operation of a project

Project Formulation :
 Actual formulation of the project is started after
the basic data have been collected and the
projections have been made.
 The process of project formulation is as
follows:
– Problem identification and statement of
the problem
– Solution identification
– Projection for planning
– Definition of alternatives & evaluation of
alternative
 The project evaluation is carried out to select
economically most suitable alternative
 If the best alternative meets the laid economic
criteria (minimum expected benefit cost-ratio),
it may be adopted for construction.
 The best alternative may consists of a unit or a
combination of units which are economically
most efficient.
 The financial analysis to compare project alternatives
may be performed in several ways as follows:
– Determination of net benefits, which is equal to the
economic benefits minus economic costs.
– Determination of benefit cost ratio
– Determination of rate of return on investment on
investment which is equal to (annual benefits-annual
costs) / (investment cost)
– Determination of the internal rate of return, which
is the rate of discount applied to annual costs and
benefits

so that the present worth of all costs equal to the

present worth of all benefits.

– Out of these, benefit cost ratio is the most common

indicator adopted in economic analysis
 Out of selected alternatives the project which has
minimum negative effects on environment should be
performed for consideration.
 Some of the common environmental effects are as
follows:
There is displacement of people nearby project site
w/c causes rehabilitation problems
It causes the degradation of the channel down
stream of the reservoir.
There is usually damage to the fish and wild life
 There is loss geological, historical, archaeological
or scenic sites due to submergence caused by a
reservoir.
 There may be changes in ecology of an area due to
destruction of some species of flora and fauna.
 There is damage to vegetation on the river bank due
to changes of flow patterns.
 Due to construction of large dams there is usually
change in natural landscape of the region.
 There may be change in the water quality as a
result of drainage from irrigation project.
 The planner should be extremely careful to avoid these
pitfalls.
Blind adherence to existing practices
Incomplete preliminary report
Too early construction
Wrong justification of a flood-control reservoir
A prior decisions
Failure to consider all alternatives
Not considering true prices
Incorrect use of next best alternatives
END!!!!!!!!

Thanks for Your Attention!!!