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The article discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the large-scale hydropower system development in China. Topics covered include insights on topical areas of hydropower generation, transmission, and absorption, areas where the history of water resources systems research and modeling approaches can help address these challenges, and the need to model complex hydraulic and electrical relations in large-scale cascade hydropower systems.

Collaborative negotiation has been widely used for developing water policy. Nevertheless, a serious lacuna remains in the understanding of the factors that determine whether the negotiators in this bargaining process will be able to reach agreement. This paper argues that the literature has focused on the process that is followed in negotiations, to the virtual exclusion of the substance of the issues that are to be resolved. As a consensus can only be reached concerning a change in policy if each party receives compensation for the concessions that it makes, a precondition for collaborative negotiation is that each party must have control over some asset that it can "trade" with the other parties. When this condition is met, it can be said that the process has "substance." The authors identify a number of situations in which negotiations over water policy may possess this characteristic. However, they also argue that there is a large set of cases in which positive net gains are available, but in which at least one party lacks control over an asset that can be exchanged. In these cases, a number of government policies are investigated that could provide stakeholders with the necessary tradable goods and, therefore, could impart substance to the process. Many situations still remain, however, in which collaboration will lack substance, and stakeholders can be expected either to seek alternative means for pursuing their goals or to waste their effort in endless bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the major hub of California's water supply system and is central to the ecosystem of many native threatened and endangered species. Conflicts over the Delta have evolved over more than a century. This paper traces changes in this conflict in game-theoretic terms, with its implications for the region's physical and ecological decline and governance. The Delta is not a zero-sum problem and win-win resolutions may exist if stakeholders cooperate. Game theory provides some insights on the potential for win-win solutions. The Delta problem has had a Prisoner's Dilemma structure, in which stakeholder self-interest makes cooperation unlikely within a reasonable time frame. However, the core of the Delta conflict is changing as the unsustainable future becomes more widely understood. Today's Delta problem has characteristics of a Chicken game, where cooperation is in everyone's interest, but it is unlikely because parties deviating from the status quo are likely to bear more of the costs of a long-term solution. The State of California may become the victim (or chicken) of the Delta game, bearing the greatest costs, if it continues to rely on leaving parties to develop voluntary cooperative solutions without a sufficient mechanism for enforcing cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on water resources systems analysis, based on the result of a panel discussion held at the Environmental Water Resources Institute (EWRI) Congress in Cincinnati, Ohio in May 2013. Topics include the tools and techniques to identify components of a system, the science of defining water-based problems and the role of other branches of science in evaluating the system. Also discussed are computational capabilities, the use of satellite, sensor, automation and networking.

The authors discuss issues to be considered by water professionals for sustainability monitoring and assessment. They describe sustainable development as a quality issue and a process. They recommend developing processes and tools that help promote sustainability and practicing participatory planning and collaborative, trust-based decision-making based on a common sense of urgency.

Panel discussions about water resources systems analysis (WRSA) at the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) Congress have brought together different generations of WRSA researchers and practitioners since 2012. There is an argument that a WRSA problem is never truly solved, but rather a given solution is simply accepted and implemented - an important point to make to WRSA students. Monitoring and ex post evaluation are not often done in WRSA projects, but they are critical to inform future studies and refine the WRSA techniques. [Extracted from the article]

Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]