New methodologies for the integrated analysis of groundwater management. Altiplano water system case study (Murcia, SE Spain)

Abstract

Integrated analysis of water management incorporates a great range of dimensions and aspects involved in the management of a water system. Lately, these kind of studies have become numerous because they allow getting a holistic knowledge and they also help managers with the decision making process. Nevertheless, there is not yet a general methodology for tackling this type of studies and there is a big opened field concerning the tools and techniques application. This paper establishes a methodology, which can be extrapolated to other case studies, and a practical procedure for the integrated analysis of groundwater management. This analysis starts with the identification and conceptualization of the hydric problematic. Then, a second phase is focused on the development of sectorial and detailed studies. The third phase is the building of the Decision Support System (DSS) based on the results from the sectorial studies. This research develops and proposes the application of a stochastic DSS based on Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks (OOBNs) that allows incorporating a huge range of aspects such as hydrogeological, socioeconomic and environmental, among others. The last phase of the procedure is the simulation of water management scenarios through the DSS. This allows comparing and quantifying the impacts generated by three water management interventions which have been proposed previously. The first scenario establishes the continuation of the current situation, the second scenario is made up of for several water management interventions which are the incoming of external water resources, the purchase of water rights and a reduction of the water demand; finally, the third scenario implies to reach the equilibrium in the aquifer water budgets.