Contents:
Over the past centuries, the amount of water used for human activities has rapidly increased. To increase water availability for human water use and to prevent floods, many natural water systems around the world have been modified. As a result, the carrying capacity of these water systems has been reduced or exceeded. Future climate change and socio-economic development are expected to aggravate this. How future developments and climate change will affect the water systems is highly uncertain. To improve water management in the future, it is important to better understand the interactions between climate change, human interventions, and the functioning of water systems. Also, it is important to manage our systems in a more flexible and adaptive way. This course will cover key theories, methods, and approaches to adapting water systems to future pressures, like climate change and socio-economic changes. The group work (that is part of this course) will focus on impacts and adaptation in urbanized deltas.
During the course, the students will learn about climate change scenarios and the impacts of climate change on water resources, flood risks, and water management. We will discuss how socio-economic changes affect water systems, water demand, and land use. Using this information, the students will learn how to develop different types of scenarios and how to do a vulnerability assessment.
In the course, different approaches to climate change adaptation in the water sector and possible adaptation tools will also be addressed. Future changes are highly uncertain. During the course, we will discuss what methods are available to develop governance arrangements that take into account the uncertainties. We will discuss examples from both the developed and developing world, and we will cover topics such as water scarcity, saltwater intrusion, pollution, and changing flood risks.
During the course, students will develop an adaptive water management plan for an urbanized (sub)-basin or delta. Students will study the main climate change impacts, develop future scenarios, and assess the main vulnerabilities of that basin/delta, and will, based on their findings, develop an adaptation strategy from a critical assessment of different adaptation measures and governance arrangements.
Learning outcomes:
After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
explain the main principles of water management considering global change;
analyze climate change impacts on water resources and water management practices;
design simple future water use scenarios relevant for water management specific to a case-study region;
integrate social and biophysical vulnerabilities into planning for water systems;
design simple adaptation measures and different governance arrangements for climate change adaptation, specific to a case-study region;
critically assess developed adaptation measures related to the management of water resources.
