Assessment and Decision Making
The FutureDAMS Approach to the Design and Assessment of WEFE Mega Systems
The FutureDAMS Approach to assessing the potential costs and benefits of decisions about dams and other system interventions has two main components (both are open access).
1 Simulation tools for technically assessing decisions about water and energy systems
These two components reflect the need for all decisions about dams to be socially contextualised (people who may be affected must be part of decision-making processes) and to achieve a high quality technical analysis of the forms and scales of benefits and costs that will be produced.
River basin simulation and assessment tools
WaterStrategy is a free online platform for collaborative water management and planning. Water-energy-food-environment system simulations can easily be built, updated, run, visualized, and shared.
Engaging stakeholders in WEFE systems assessment and planning
The best outcomes for meeting water, energy, food and environment needs will be achieved through participatory stakeholder engagement. Start the planning journey by considering development options with a broad range of stakeholders.
Free, web-based simulation tools for river basins and energy systems
FutureDAMS is enabling new forms of analysis for the assessment of interventions, such as new infrastructure or management policies, in water-energy-food-environment (WEFE) systems. Core project tools include system-scale simulation of multi-region multi-sector resource systems, multi-criteria design, and accessible interactive web tools.
WaterStrategy is a free online platform for collaborative water management and planning. Water-energy-food-environment system simulations can easily be built, updated, run, visualized, and shared.
Use cases
- Assessing interventions (new infrastructure and policies) in water resource systems.
- Multisector evaluation of water supply and allocation in water-energy-food-environment systems.
- Climate change impact assessments.
- Integrated water resources management (IWRM) studies.
Features
- Easy-to-use graphical user interface for water-energy-food-environment system modeling.
- Cloud computing to securely manage large datasets and models on Microsoft Azure.
- Track system evolution over space and time (flows, storages, abstractions, transfers, etc.) and report on system performance (reliability, resilience, vulnerability, cost, etc.).
- Share models and results in a secure and controlled way within teams and with decision-makers and stakeholders.
Technology
- Simulations use the open source Python Water Resources (‘Pywr’) model.
- Data is managed by Hydra Platform, an open-source data manager.
- The open-source Pynsim library is used to connect models when needed.
Training videos
Get step-by-step instructions on how to use the online simulation and assessment tools with the FutureDAMS tutorial videos.
Case studies
Find more information on how river basin models have been developed and applied.