#ISSS2018 Corvallis

3351 FROM MOSAIC TO SYSTEMATIC: OUTLINING A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 
Richard Burgess
Texas Tech University – Whitacre College of Engineering, Box 41023, Lubbock, TX 79409, richard.burgess@ttu.edu  

Keith Horbatuck
658 15th Street South, Unit A, Arlington, VA 22202, keith.horbatuck@ttu.edu  Mario Beruvides, Ph.D., P.E.
Texas Tech University – Whitacre College of Engineering, Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems
Engineering Box  43061, Lubbock, TX 79409, mario.beruvides@ttu.edu

Effective Water Resource Management (WRM) is a complex undertaking that requires a variety of solutions; including economic ones.   Both supply-side and demand-side management approaches have been implemented with the goal of meeting the demands of multiple stakeholders while being constrained by challenges such as infrastructure inefficiencies, water source access issues, and short-termism/political expedience.  While successes have been made on both the supply and demand side, there is doubt that either approach is sufficient on its own to promote effective, sustainable water resource management over the long-term.  In light of this, it is natural to propose an amalgamation of the two.  However, combining the approaches without considering 1) which variant is most appropriate or, importantly, 2) potential interaction effects between the two means the hybrid will be merely mosaic in nature.  While such mosaic approaches do reflect a much needed diversity in solutions, they run the risk of being suboptimal at best.  At worst, they can be counterproductive.  Instead, a systems-based approach to effective management is necessary.

A complete systems approach includes an understanding of the goals and assumptions underwriting WRM.  An important place to begin in this regard is with the concept of resilience.  Water managers want their systems to be resilient to stress and the recent crisis in Cape Town illustrates the perils of failing to meet such a goal.  Furthermore, the economic strategies highlighted above are intended to make water systems more resilient.  Given this role, it is critical to be clear about the definition of resilience, who the stakeholders in a resilient system are, and over what time scale resilience is measured.  A systems-based approach to WRM should begin by banishing some any conceptual uncertainty.  In Part I of this paper, the authors canvas several key resilience concepts and highlight some of the philosophical contentions that lie behind them.  In Part II, the authors review economic theory for both supply and demand-side approaches. In Part III, then, the authors consider how these two strategies can be applied to WRM specifically; leveraging Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s concept of Isomorphology to clarify the connection between general economic theory and its application to the management of water resources.  Finally, in Part IV the authors sketch out a research program intended to develop the framework initialized in this paper.  This will include a brief discussion of future empirical research.  It is not uncommon for experts to proclaim that a systems-level approach is necessary for the effective and sustained management of water resources.  However, details can be sparse on what such an approach looks like.  This paper is intended to help address this paucity of specifics.

Keywords: water resource management, isomorphology, resilience, supply and demand-side economics