On November 2, 2022, Dr. Antonia Hadjimichael from Penn State’s Department of Geosciences will present “Planning for Water Resources Systems under Uncertainty: The Case of the Upper Colorado River Basin” as part of the EEEPI Seminar Series.
Abstract: The Colorado River is the largest river in the southwestern United States, underpinning economic activities worth an estimated $300 billion/year within the state of Colorado alone. Within the state, the Upper Colorado sub-basin supports several thousand diversions, administered to water rights holders through the system of prior appropriation. These right holders form a network of interdependent water users from agricultural, municipal, industrial and energy sectors. Increasing climatic stress and demand for water have these users vying for this limited resource, in a competition intrinsically shaped by the seniority of their rights and their location in the basin. Through the use of exploratory modeling approaches, we investigate a large ensemble of potential future changes that could take place in the basin and analyze how they might impact the degree of water shortages experienced by the basin’s multitude of users. We look at how changes in climatic extremes, municipal demands, agricultural demands, and water rights and infrastructure propagate through this integrated water allocation network to affect the magnitude, frequency and duration of water shortage for different users. The exploratory ensemble is then paired with novel diagnostic evaluation methods that employ sensitivity analysis tools to improve our inferences on stakeholder-specific shortage controls. Exploratory work of this type allows us to investigate both cross-sectoral impacts in the basin (e.g., the effects on agricultural users of a hydropower plant controlling a major senior water right changing its operations), as well as the large heterogeneity in potential impacts to water users.
Speaker Bio: Antonia Hadjimichael is an interdisciplinary scientist studying complex human-Earth systems, specifically in the domain of water and planning under uncertainty. Her research sheds light on how human and Earth systems interact across scales, especially on how their interactions shape human impacts. She holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Leicester, UK, a MSc in Environmental Modeling from University College London (UCL), UK, and a PhD in Water Science and Technology from the University of Girona, Spain. She serves as Chair of Communications for the Society for Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty, in the Facilitation Team for the MultiSector Dynamics Community of Practice, and she has recently been elected to Penn State’s Water Council.