Water Resources
Infranstructure
Modeling
Water Resources
• Water resources are sources of water that are useful
or potentially useful.
• Uses of water include agricultural, industrial,
household, recreational and environmental activities.
• The majority of human uses requires fresh water.
Infrastructure
• Infrastructure refers to fundamental facilities and
systems serving a country, city or area, including the
services and facilities necessary for its economy to
function.
• It tipically characterises technical structures such as
roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers,
electrical grids, telecommunications, and so forth.
• It can be defined as “the physical components of
interrelated systems providing commodities and
services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance
societal living conditions.”
Planning, Management and Design
• Planning, management and design are a critical element of sustainable economic development
and expansion.
• In the process of planning and design there is a need to critically analyze the true economic
costs, benefits and environmental consequences of projects.
• A lack of this analysis can often lead to a level of design quality which falls far short of optimal
with respect to the utilization of scarce economic and natural resources and will not improve
the ecological balance of systems in general.
• More recently, population shifts, industrial and political changes have led political leaders and
planners to the conclusion that unlimited expansion and development are no longer the
primary objectives in social and economic systems planning and design.
• The single-objective, singlepurpose, single-facility project approach to solving problems that
was so common in the past is unacceptable today and has been replaced by multi-objective,
multi-purpose, multi-facility solutions at a large scale which must be not only technically
feasible but socially, environmentally, economically, and politically feasible as well.
• In most planning situations it is hard to see how all of these disparate components can be
combined into system designs which meet prescribed and sometimes conflicting objectives and
constraints imposed on a project.
Systems Analysis
• Systems analysis can aid in identifying those likely situations where a minimum investment of
funds and energies will produce maximum gains in terms of resource allocations, economic
development and environmental welfare.
• Generally speaking, systems analysis is the art and science of disassembling complex
phenomena into smaller, isolated, more readily understood, subsystems and analyzing the
interactions between the subsystems and between the subsystems and the larger environment.
• This is a natural human process: examining a complex process by directing attention to the
component parts and the relationships between the components.
• Using systems analysis we can focus on the functioning of the components under the various
conditions to which the system may be subjected.
• In many situations, by focusing on the relationships and interactions between the components
of complex systems, systems analysis can provide a means of sorting through the myriad of
possible solutions to a problem and narrowing the search to a few potentially optimal ones in
addition to determining and illustrating the consequences of these alternatives and the
tradeoffs between conflicting objectives.
• The central method used in water resource systems analysis is to couple the descriptions of
physical and socioeconomic systems through the use of mathematical models.
Systems Definition
• A system is a collection of components and their interrelationships forming an entity (e.g., a
river basin) which is acted upon by external forces, influences or inputs (precipitation) and
produces a specific effect or output (streamflow).
• That is, a system is a set of objects which transforms an input into an output, the exact output
produced depending on certain system properties or parameters (e.g., soil types, vegetation,
topography). This transformation depends upon the parameters of the system and the design
policies imposed on it.
• Systems analysis involves the construction and linkage of mathematical models of the physical
and economic subsystems associated with resource allocation systems.
• The purpose of constructing these models is to aid engineers, planners and decision makers in
identifying and evaluating alternative designs and to determine which ones meet project
objectives in an efficient manner.
• These mathematical models are able to predict a system’s response to different design
alternatives and conditions.
• The models are a set of mathematical expressions (partial or ordinary differential or algebraic
equations) describing the physical, biological, chemical, and economic processes which take
place in the system.
Simulation and Optimization Models
• Most systems models are based on statements
of basic conservation laws (mass, energy, and
momentum), but they can also be empirical or
statistical.
• Systems analysis models are generally broken
down into two categories: simulation models
and optimization models.
General diagram of a
groundwater system
showing inputs, outputs,
parameters, and policies.
Simulation Models
• Simulation models are used to predict a system’s response to a given design
configuration with great accuracy and detail, and to identify the probable costs,
benefits, and impacts of a project.
• That is, the simulation model predicts the outcome of a single, specified set of
design or policy variables.
• However, the space of possible design and policy variable values is, in general,
infinite.
• Simulation models, while important tools for managing systems, do not identify or
narrow the search for optimal policies or designs for a problem; they provide only
localized information regarding the response of the system to one particular design
alternative at a time.
• Separate simulation model runs are required for each design or policy alternative
considered.
• In many situations the number of alternative designs is sufficiently large to preclude
simulating each alternative and some other method is normally used to narrow the
field of search.
Optimization Models
• Optimization models provide a means of reducing the number of alternatives which
need to be simulated in detail, i.e., screening them.
• These models search the space of possible design variable values and identify an
optimal design and/or operating policy for a given system design objective and set of
constraints.
• The sensitivity of the optimal solution to changes in the model parameters can be
readily determined and tradeoffs between several conflicting objectives can also be
calculated with most optimization models.
• These models are usually extensions of simulation models and include as unknowns
the design or operating variables (decision variables) of each alternative.
• These models include relationships which describe the state variables and costs or
benefits of each alternative as a function of the decision variables.
• Constraints are also included in the models to restrict the values of the design or
state variables.
• Optimization models are generally used for preliminary evaluation or screening of
alternatives and to identify important data needs prior to extensive data collection
and simulation modeling activities.
Model Building Process
• The process of developing the mathematical simulation and optimization models which
represent the system under investigation consists of several steps.
• The first step, problem identification, is to identify the important elements of the system
which pertain to the problem at hand and the interactions between the components. That is, a
general outline and purpose of the model must be established. The analyst will need to
identify the appropriate type of model for the system and the degree of accuracy needed given
the time and resources available for modeling. Generally the simplest model with the least
number of parameters which will produce reliable results in the time available is preferred.
• In the next step, conceptualization and development, the mathematical description of the
relationships identified previously are established. In this step appropriate computational
techniques are also determined and implemented for the problem.
• Calibration of the mathematical model is then performed to determine reliable estimates of
the model parameters. In this procedure the model outputs are compared with actual historical
or measured outputs of the system and the parameters are adjusted until the model predicted
and the measured values agree.
• Then a model verification exercise is carried out in which an independent set of input data is
used in the model and the predicted results are compared with measured outputs and if they
are found to agree the model is considered to be verified and ready for use in simulation or
optimization.
General diagram of
the steps in the model
building process.
Course Content
1. Introduction
2. Economic Analysis of Water Resources
3. Water Management in River Systems
4. Optimal Management of Groundwater
5. Optimal Selection of Agricultural Crops
6. Optimal Development of Canals
7. Problems of Power Networks
8. Optimal Solution of Heat Tranfer Problems
9. Optimal Solution of Fluid Flow Problems
