Hydro-Economic Evaluation of Surface Water Reservoirs on Indus River System

Abstract

The purpose of developing integrated hydro economic models is to explore the nature of interactions between economy and water. These models have typically been built by civil engineers and hydrologists, addressing both multiple and single objective trade-offs and decision-making. Because of its competing use and resource scarcity, water is now considered an economic good. This has led to need of a policy to optimize the economic returns from water management. The idea is to include economic aspects by making them an integral part of the water resource management models. Keeping in mind the significance of inter relationships of hydrology and economics, an appropriate basin scale hydro-economic model is developed. It aims to study the hydrological and economic effects on groundwater extraction resulting from addition of surface water reservoirs. The developed model has been validated and it can be used as forecasting tool and to predict seasonal distribution of water among the provinces, based on water rights agreed among provinces. Apart from development of the model, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data of Indus River System was also analyzed. GRACE satellites can detect minute changes in gravity on a moderate (degree-scale) resolution. By removing signal due to tectonics and other effects, the GRACE data can isolate the changes (monthly time step) in terrestrial water storage. These data have proved to be a valuable tool in detecting the long term loss of water in Alaska (glacier melt), California (groundwater extraction) and other areas. Significance and flexibility of GRACE data has encouraged to perform the analysis of the available liquid water equivalent (lwe) data over a period of time in the Indus watershed. The results of analysis enabled to investigate long term trends in Indus watershed and helped in better understanding of the reasons of variability caused in Indus River Basin.