جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "groundwater resources management" در نشریات گروه "مهندسی آب"

The concepts of equity-and-justice are presented in the laws, regulations, and decision-making frameworks as a central guiding principle in the allocation strategies of water-resources. Meanwhile, the inclusion of these concepts in the planning-and-management of water-resources faces obstacles such as incomplete conceptual understanding, lack of quantitative-qualitative criteria, unclear relationship between justice-and-fairness and planning frameworks and water-resources management strategies, and lack of concrete examples. This study presents a qualitative-documentary-study that examines what justice and with more focus equity, as one of the justice principles, mean in the context of groundwater planning-and-management. Accordingly, the methods of operationalizing equity and integrating equity into the planning processes of groundwater-resources have been introduced in this study. The results indicate that justice-and-equity are not universally defined. Water justice-and-equity differ according to water-resource content and type, laws, and frameworks defined in each country and water basin. Meanwhile, the use of metrics related to the equity principles, simulation-optimization methods, and the system-model design maybe used to operationalize, metricize, and benchmark equitable water policy and practices at all levels of decision-making (e.g., country, state, and local) to ensure an equitable water future. The study of equity dimensions revealed that participatory programs provide stakeholders with an opportunity to contribute to models and programming; however, skilled facilitation is necessary in order to ensure meaningful and equitable engagement between scientists and communities. In this study rather than providing a prescriptive-solution to “achieve” justice-and-equity within groundwater-resources management, we emphasize the need for contextualized approaches that include pragmatic steps toward more equitable practices and outcomes.

Regarding the supply of large amount of water demand from groundwater resources on the one hand, and increasing water level drop of the aquifers on the other hand, the importance of groundwater resources management is significantly increasing. Due to the complexities in the socio-ecological systems related to the groundwater resources, there is a need for tools to model these complexities in the form of effective agents’ relations. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a computer simulation with a comprehensive approach of stakeholders, or agents that interact with each other and with their environment based on certain behavioral principles. In this paper, farmers, effective institutional agents and aquifer behaviors and their interactions in the Shabestar-Sofian plain is modeled using ABM with stakeholder participation through interviews and semi-structured questionnaires. The results of the implementation of five sample scenarios show that if the institutions are properly coordinated and the participation of farmers is attracted, it could be possible to reduce 202 million cubic meters of wells extraction over 10 years, in addition to increasing the income of farmers simultaneously and to compensate about 40 percent of negative groundwater balance. Using this model, a better understanding of the sophisticated system of groundwater resources management can be obtained, stakeholder participation can be attracted, and by defining scenarios in a participatory process, better solutions can be achieved in the decision-making process.