Cooperation and equity in the river sharing problem

This paper considers environments in which several agents (countries, farmers, cities) share water from a river. Each agent enjoys a concave benefit function from consuming water up to a satiation level. Noncooperative extraction is typically inefficient and any group of agents can gain if they agree on how to allocate water with monetary compensations. The paper describes which allocations of water and money are acceptable to riparian agents according to core stability and several criteria of fairness. It reviews some theoretical results. It then discusses the implementation of the proposed allocation with negotiation rules and in water markets. Lastly, it provides some policy insights.WATER ALLOCATION;GAME;CORE;WATER MARKET;NEGOTIATION;RULES;EXTERNALITIES

Sharing a river among satiable countries

With diminishing global water reserves the problem of water allocation becomes increasingly important. We consider the problem of efficiently sharing a river among a group of satiable countries. Inducing countries to efficiently cooperate requires monetary compensations via international agreements. We show that cooperation of the other countries exerts a positive externality on the benefit of a coalition. Our problem is to distribute the benefit of efficiently sharing the river under these constraints. If the countries outside of a coalition do not cooperate at all, then the downstream incremental distribution is the unique compromise between the absolute territorial sovereignty (ATS) doctrine and the unlimited territorial integrity (UTI) doctrine. If all countries outside a coalition cooperate, then there may not exist any distribution satisfying the UTI doctrine.WATER ALLOCATION;EXTERNALITIES

STS-1 mission contamination evaluation approach

The space transportation system 1 mission will be the first opportunity to assess the induced environment of the orbiter payload bay region. Two tools were developed to aid in this assessment. The shuttle payload contamination evaluation computer program was developed to provide an analytical tool for prediction of the induced molecular contamination environment of the space shuttle orbiter during its onorbit operations. An induced environment contamination monitor was constructed and tested to measure the space shuttle orbiter contamination environment inside the payload bay during ascent and descent and inside and outside the payload bay during the onorbit phase. Measurements are to be performed during the four orbital flight test series. Measurements planned for the first flight are described and predicted environmental data are discussed. The results indicate that the expected data are within the measurement range of the induced environment contamination monitor instruments evaluated, and therefore it is expected that useful contamination environmental data will be available after the first flight