Designing Adaptive Policy Pathways for Sustainable Water Management under Uncertainty: Lessons Learned from Two Cases

Water management in river deltas is increasingly being challenged by pressures from population growth, sea level rise, increasing variability in river runoffs, and potential climate change. Adaptation to such changes is not only determined by what is known or anticipated at present, but also by what will be experienced and learned as the future...

Blue limits of the Blue Planet: An exploratory analysis of safe operating spaces for human water use under deep uncertainty

In the Nature article ‘A safe operating space for humanity’, Rockström et al. (2009) introduce the concept of a safe operating space for humanity. A safe operating space is the space for human activities that will not push the planet out of the ‘Holocene state’ that has seen human civilizations arise, develop, and thrive. Rockström et al. have...

Safe Operating Spaces for Human Water Use: Applying Exploratory Modeling and Patient Rule Induction to ANEMI

Safe operating space for human activities that will not push the planet out of the ‘Holocene state’ that has seen human civilizations arise, develop, and thrive can be defined with respect to among others global freshwater use. Establishing such limits is a methodological challenge because they are critically depended on local conditions, the...

Computer assisted dynamic adaptive policy design for sustainable water management in river deltas in a changing environment

Sustainable water management in a changing environment full of uncertainty is a profound challenge. To deal with uncertainties, dynamic adaptive policies can be used. Such policies can change over time in response to how the future unfolds, to what we learn about the system, to changes in environment, and to changes in societal preferences. This...

Exploratory system dynamics: A directed search for limits to global water use

Rockström et al. (2009) introduced the concept of a safe operating space for humanity that will not push the planet out of the ‘Holocene state’. These limits are being investigated for various earth bound systems. Estimates of these limits are plagued by uncertainty. In case of the limits to the world water system, these uncertainties arise out...

Dynamic adaptive policy pathways: A method for crafting robust decisions for a deeply uncertain world

A new paradigm for planning under conditions of deep uncertainty has emerged in the literature. According to this paradigm, a planner should create a strategic vision of the future, commit to short-term actions, and establish a framework to guide future actions. A plan that embodies these ideas allows for its dynamic adaptation over time to meet...

Fit for purpose? Building and evaluating a fast, integrated model for exploring water policy pathways

Exploring adaptation pathways is an emerging approach for supporting decision making under uncertain changing conditions. An adaptation pathway is a sequence of policy actions to reach specified objectives. To develop adaptation pathways, interactions between environment and policy response need to be analysed over time for an ensemble of...

Dealing with Uncertainties in Fresh Water Supply: Experiences in the Netherlands

Developing fresh water supply strategies for the long term needs to take into account the fact that the future is deeply uncertain. Not only the extent of climate change and the extent and nature of its impacts are unknown, also socio-economic conditions may change in unpredictable ways, as well as social preferences. Often, it is not possible...

Robustness Metrics: How Are They Calculated, When Should They Be Used and Why Do They Give Different Results?

Robustness is being used increasingly for decision analysis in relation to deep uncertainty and many metrics have been proposed for its quantification. Recent studies have shown that the application of different robustness metrics can result in different rankings of decision alternatives, but there has been little discussion of what potential...

Distributive Justice and Sustainability Goals in Transboundary Rivers: Case of the Nile Basin

The importance of cooperation on transboundary waters is stated as a target in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG6: water). Cooperation on transboundary water management is critical, particularly because it concerns issues across multiple states, SDGs and targets regarding agriculture, energy, ecosystems,...

Exploring global approximators for multiobjective reservoir control

Efficient multi-purpose reservoir control policies are crucial in the face of frequent and severe floods and droughts, and to balance water allocation across conflicting demands. Evolutionary Multi-Objective Direct Policy Search (EMODPS) is a popular approach to design control policies for multi-purpose reservoir systems. EMODPS, however, relies...

Evaluating the choice of radial basis functions in multiobjective optimal control applications

Evolutionary Multi-Objective Direct Policy Search (EMODPS) is a prominent framework for designing control policies in multi-purpose environmental systems, combining direct policy search with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) to identify Pareto approximate control policies. While EMODPS is effective, the choice of functions...