Developing new scenarios for water allocation negotiations: a case study of the Euphrates River Basin

Mismanagement and uneven distribution of water may lead to or increase conflict among countries. Allocation of water among trans-boundary river neighbours is a key issue in utilization of shared water resources. The bankruptcy theory is a cooperative Game Theory method which is used when the amount of demand of riparian states is larger than total available water. In this study, we survey the application of seven methods of Classical Bankruptcy Rules (CBRs) including Proportional (CBR-PRO), Adjusted Proportional (CBR-AP), Constrained Equal Awards (CBR-CEA), Constrained Equal Losses (CBR-CEL), Piniles (CBR-Piniles), Minimal Overlap (CBR-MO), Talmud (CBR-Talmud) and four Sequential Sharing Rules (SSRs) including Proportional (SSR-PRO), Constrained Equal Awards (SSR-CEA), Constrained Equal Losses (SSR-CEL) and Talmud (SSR-Talmud) methods in allocation of the Euphrates River among three riparian countries: Turkey, Syria and Iraq. However, there is not a certain documented method to find more equitable allocation rule. Therefore, in this paper, a new method is established for choosing the most appropriate allocating rule which seems to be more equitable than other allocation rules to satisfy the stakeholders. The results reveal that, based on the new propose model, the CBR-AP seems to be more equitable to allocate the Euphrates River water among Turkey, Syria and Iraq

Consensus-Based Fuzzy Group Decision-Making Framework for Tailoring Good Water Governance to the Context: A Case Study of Sistan, Iran

Although good water governance (GWG) is a widely accepted concept, mistaking its principles for silver bullet approaches has hindered its successful applications. This highlights the idea that one-size-fits-all thinking does not satisfy the need to navigate toward sustainable outcomes in ever-changing complex water systems. This also indicates that endeavors toward governing water systems must be tailored to the specific context that these systems are nested within. Scholars have pointed out the importance of residents' input in contextualizing water governance practices. With that being said, this paper proposes an innovative approach to tailoring principles of GWG to the context by building an analytical framework upon which survey research was conducted. The survey, it took input from three categories of residents, namely experts, authorities, and experienced locals. Analyzing the data led to a group decision-making problem that was approached using fuzzy risk-based multiple-attribute decision-making methods, including technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution and ordered weighted averaging, while considering the amount of consensus among mentioned groups. Furthermore, to validate the results of the decision-making problem analysis, additional interviews were conducted to get a more pragmatic picture of the situation. Sistan Delta in Iran was selected as a case study mainly due to the current undesirable situation and also the international social, political, and environmental significance of the area. This study aims to take the first step of rethinking water governance in the area. The results indicated that to operationalize good governance, the principles of collaboration, legitimacy, adaptability, and trust and engagement must be prior considerations to redefine the water governance structure in the Sistan region. Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Energie and Industri

A global Budyko model to partition evaporation into interception and transpiration

Evaporation is a crucial flux in the hydrological cycle and links the water and energy balance of a catchment. The Budyko framework is often used to provide a first-order estimate of evaporation, as it is a straightforward model with only rainfall and potential evaporation as required input. Many researchers have improved the Budyko framework by including more physics and catchment characteristics in the original equation. However, the parameterization of these improved Budyko models is not so straightforward, is data demanding, and requires local knowledge that is difficult to obtain at the global scale. In this paper we present an improvement of the previously presented Gerrits' model ("Analytical derivation of the Budyko curve based on rainfall characteristics and a simple evaporation model" in Gerrits et al., 2009 WRR), whereby total evaporation is calculated on the basis of simple interception and transpiration thresholds in combination with measurable parameters like rainfall dynamics and storage availability from remotely sensed data sources. While Gerrits' model was previously investigated for 10 catchments with different climate conditions and where some parameters were assumed to be constant, in this study we applied the model at the global scale and fed the model with remotely sensed input data. The output of the model has been compared to two complex land-surface models, STEAM and GLEAM, as well as the database of Landflux-EVAL. Our results show that total evaporation estimated by Gerrits' model is in good agreement with Landflux-EVAL, STEAM, and GLEAM. The results also show that Gerrits' model underestimates interception in comparison to STEAM and overestimates it in comparison to GLEAM, whereas the opposite is found for transpiration. Errors in interception can partly be explained by differences in the definition of interception that successively introduce errors in the calculation of transpiration. Relating to the Budyko framework, the model shows a reasonable performance for the estimation of total evaporation. The results also found a unimodal distribution of the transpiration to precipitation fraction (Et/p), indicating that both increasing and decreasing aridity will result in a decline in the fraction of transpired rainfall by plants for growth and metabolism.Water Resource

A simple global Budyko model to partition evaporation into interception and transpiration

Evaporation is a very important flux in the hydrological cycle and links the water and energy balance of a catchment. The Budyko framework is often used to provide a first order estimate of evaporation, since it is a simple model where only rainfall and potential evaporation is required as input. Many researchers have tried to improve the Budyko framework by including more physics and catchment characteristics into the original equation. However, this often resulted in additional parameters, which are unknown or difficult to determine. In this paper we present an improvement of the previously presented Gerrits' model (“Analytical derivation of the Budyko curve based on rainfall characteristics and a simple evaporation model” in Gerrits et al., 2009 WRR), whereby total evaporation is calculated on the basis of simple interception and transpiration thresholds in combination with measurable parameters like rainfall dynamics and storage availability from remotely sensed data sources. While Gerrits' model was investigated for 10 catchments with different climate conditions and also some parameters were assumed to be constant, in this study we applied the model on the global scale and it was fed with remotely sensed input data. The output of the model is compared to two complex land–surface models STEAM and GLEAM, as well as the database of Landflux-EVAL. Our results showed that total evaporation estimated by Gerrits' model is in good agreement with Landflux-EVAL, STEAM and GLEAM. Results also show that Gerrits’ model underestimated interception in comparison to STEAM and overestimated in comparison to GLEAM, while for transpiration the opposite was found. Errors in interception can partly be explained by differences in the interception definition that successively introduce errors in the calculation of transpiration. Comparing to the Budyko framework, the model showed a good performance for total evaporation estimation and the results are closer to Ol'dekop than Schreiber, Pike and Budyko curves.Water Resource

Data underlying the publication: A global Budyko model to partition evaporation into interception and transpiration

This model calculates total evaporation on the basis of simple interception and transpiration thresholds in combination with measurable parameters like rainfall dynamics and storage availability from remotely sensed data sources

Maintaining status quo or realizing transformation in transboundary water conflicts? The power–interests–identity nexus in the Helmand river basin

This paper contributes to the critical hydropolitics literature by introducing the power–interests–identity nexus framework and addresses how it shapes decisions and (re)actions to transform or maintain water conflicts. The framework is investigated using the Helmand/Hirmand river basin, shared by Afghanistan and Iran. It elucidates which factors led to the transformation of Iran–Afghanistan water conflicts and the signing of the 1973 Treaty, as well as the influential factors that have contributed to its maintenance in the 2020s. The results demonstrate using the framework provides comprehensive insight by identifying the influential latent factors of transboundary water arrangements

Using Bankruptcy Rules to Allocate CO2 Emission Permits

LNICST, volume 277The global growth of technologies and production affects the climate through emissions of greenhouse gases. The total amount of countries’ demands of CO2 emissions permits is higher than what the planet can sustain. This situation can be considered as a bankruptcy problem, where the sum of players’ claims exceeds the endowment of the resource. In this paper, we use an approach based on bankruptcy solutions (in particular, on the Weighted Constrained Equal Awards rule) in order to propose a more efficient and fair allocation protocol for sharing CO2 emissions permits among the EU-28 countries