Comparing Two Hydro-Economic Approaches for Multi-Objective Agricultural Water Resources Planning
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Comparing Two Hydro-Economic Approaches for Multi-Objective Agricultural Water Resources Planning A. Alamanos 1
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& D. Latinopoulos & A. Loukas & N. Mylopoulos
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Received: 27 December 2019 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 / Published online: 9 October 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Hydro-economic models are valuable tools that can be used in irrigated agriculture in order to improve the understanding of the status quo of water resources, the role of water in agriculture, and the system behavior under changing conditions. The present paper attempts to give insights on how different water management objectives and data availability may influence the specification/ application of hydro-economic modeling, as well as the reliability and interpretation of their results. A Greek rural watershed located in Central Greece (Region of Thessaly) is used as a case study application. A common hydro-economic framework for sustainable water resources management in irrigated agriculture is examined, aiming to provide a simple and understandable tool for policymakers. In this framework two hydro-economic models (HEMs) were developed to address challenges regarding data limitations, spatial analysis, and scenario-based problems (e.g. agri-economic scenarios, water policy scenarios, environmental scenarios, etc.). A set of selection criteria was then used to qualitatively compare these two models, based on their advantages and disadvantages. The results of this analysis indicate that HEMs’ development must be quite flexible about their settings and must take into consideration the desired accuracy level that is likely to satisfy their main purpose/goal. The optimal approach is the one that can achieve a balance between simplicity, flexibility, accuracy and robustness. Keywords Hydro-economic modeling . Water resources management . Comparison of hydroeconomic models . Modeling settings
* A. Alamanos [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Alamanos A. et al.
1 Introduction The combination of economic, hydrological and engineering processes in models for decision support on irrigated agriculture issues is an increasingly developed field (Barthel et al. 2012; Sherafatpour et al. 2019). The integration of economic-productive objectives and environmental pressures into single model applications (mostly known as hydro-economic model) provides a holistic and coherent view of the studied problems. Hence, Hydro-Economic Models (HEMs) are increasingly used, in water resources management, agricultural issues, policymaking, and other fields with many extents, such as climate change, projects and planning, etc. (Blanco-Gutiérrez et al. 2013; Nakic 2017). The main challenge in the development of a HEM is the appropriate description of the system, and for this, adequate and necessary data is needed. Defining the main components of the model and the way they will interact is a tough task, as it needs knowledge/understanding and data relative with hydrology, water infrastructu
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