Graduate course in water resources economics and management offered at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Fall 2013

Characklis, Greg

English

DigitalCommons@USU

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All ECSTATIC Materials ECSTATIC Repository Fall 2013 Water Resource Economics and Management - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Greg Characklis University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, charack@email.unc.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/ecstatic_all  Part of the Civil Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Characklis, Greg, "Water Resource Economics and Management - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill" (2013). All ECSTATIC Materials. Paper 20. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/ecstatic_all/20 This Course Syllabus is brought to you for free and open access by the ECSTATIC Repository at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All ECSTATIC Materials by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@usu.edu. ENVR 755 Water Resource Economics and Management (3 credits) Fall 2013  Instructor:  Greg Characklis Office: Rosenau 139 Email: charack@email.unc.edu Research Group Website: www.unc.edu/~charack Phone: (919) 843-5545  Class Location and Time: Tue/Thu, 11-12:15pm in McGavran-Greenberg 2305 Office Hours: Whenever, just not right before class Prerequisites: Calculus and some computational skills. Text: Water Resource Economics: Scarcity, Policies, and Projects, Ronald C. Griffin, MIT Press, there will also be a number of handouts on various topics  Course Motivation:  Water scarcity has become a reality in a growing number of regions throughout the world, as increasing demands associated with population growth and economic development have strained finite water resources.  Growing environmental concerns over the maintenance of instream flows and the impacts of large-scale water resource development projects (e.g., dams) have served to further limit, and in some cases even reduce, the volume of available supplies.  In addition, research suggests that global climate change may increase hydrologic variability (e.g. more frequent droughts) making the maintenance of water supply reliability even more challenging.  This combination of factors has made meeting regional water demands more difficult, and a growing number of regions are seeking water resource strategies that will allow them to meet future water supply goals within budgetary and regulatory constraints.  The traditional path of simply developing additional supplies, or expanding existing facilities, is no longer practical in many places.  Therefore, planning solutions that involve integrating new development with conservation activities and reallocation (e.g., tradable rights) have become increasingly attractive.  The development of such solutions requires the use of tools from both engineering and economics, as well as an understanding of the related legal and political institutions.  Course Objectives: This course is intended to develop a student’s ability to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate approaches to water resource management in terms of their technical feasibility, economic merits, and public policy implications.  This will include assessing plans for the development of new infrastructure, as well as the expansion of existing supplies.  Economic concepts (e.g., supply, demand, economic efficiency) are discussed, followed by an introduction to methods for computing and maximizing the net benefits of water use.  Engineering concepts related to water supply and conveyance, such as hydrologic frequency analysis, are presented and applied.  Both engineering and economic principles are incorporated into optimization exercises (linear programming) that are used as a means of policy analysis.  Special effort is made to include consideration of legal, regulatory, and political factors at all levels of this course (i.e. lectures, readings, assignments), with the expectation that students will gain sufficient awareness of these issues to incorporate them into regional water resource analyses.   Course Format: The multi-faceted nature of the analytical techniques developed in this course do not lend themselves well to examinations, therefore grades will be determined on the basis of student performance on several (4-5) “mini-projects”.  These will be lengthy and require a substantial amount of forethought regarding problem formulation, solution methods, and assumptions, so please do not wait until the last minute to begin work on them.  In addition, there will be group projects that stretch over the entire semester in which students will have an opportunity to diagnose and evaluate water resource challenges in a selected region of the basis of technical, economic, and policy-related criteria.  Students will then produce a series of recommendations for improved regional water management and defend them in both written and oral presentations (in lieu of a final exam).  Grades will be based on performance in the mini-projects/homeworks (50%), group project (40%), and participation in class discussions and activities (10%).  Honor Code: You are welcome to discuss the general aspects of any of the mini-projects with your classmates, but the work you turn in is expected to be your own.     ENVR 755 Analysis of Water Resource Systems  Fall 2013   Date Lecture # Rough Schedule of Topics Remarks 8/20 1 Introduction  Chap. 1 8/22 2 Economic Concepts: Supply & Demand Chap. 2 8/27 3 Economic Concepts: Supply & Demand  8/29 4 Benefits, Costs & Net Benefits  9/3 5 Benefits, Costs & Net Benefits  9/5 6 Static Economic Efficiency  9/10 7 Discount Rates/Dynamic Efficiency Chap. 3 9/12 8 Dynamic Efficiency  9/17 9 Maximizing Net Benefits  9/19 10 Institutions and Policymaking Chap. 4 & 5 9/24 11 Water Transfers/Markets Chap. 7 9/26 12 Regional Economic Models of Water Use  10/1 13 Regional Economic Models of Water Use Chap 11 10/3 14 Regional Economic Models of Water Use  10/8 15 Infrastructure/Cost-Benefit Analyses  10/10 16 Infrastructure/Cost-Benefit Analyses  10/15 17 Preliminary Project Presentations  10/17  Fall Break  10/22 18 Infrastructure/Cost-Benefit Analyses  10/24 19 Infrastructure/Cost-Benefit Analyses Handouts 10/29 20 Hydropower, Recreation, Instream Flows  10/31 21 Hydropower, Recreation, Instream Flows  11/5 22 Reservoir/Water Supply Planning  11/7 23 Reservoir/Water Supply Planning Handouts 11/12 24 Linear Programming  11/14 25 Linear Programming Handouts 11/19 26 Optimization of Water Resource Systems  11/21 27 Final Project Presentations  11/26  Thanksgiving  12/3  28 Final Project Presentations  

Water Resource Economics and Management - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Water Resource Economics and Management - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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