1. Capacity Planning under Nonstationary Uncertainties
- Author
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Daniel P. Loucks, Jan Kuakkel, Neela P. Babu, and Warren E. Walker
- Subjects
Engineering ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Environmental resource management ,Water supply ,Land cover ,Environmental economics ,Standard of living ,Supply and demand ,Water resources ,Capacity planning ,Argument ,Probability distribution ,Resource management ,business - Abstract
A typical problem facing engineers when designing infrastructure to serve future demands is that those future demands are unknown, or at best uncertain. With respect to water supply systems, not only are future demands uncertain, so are the supplies that will be available to meet those demands. Traditionally engineers have based their design capacity estimates based in part on the statistical characteristics of past hydrological records. Today we recognize we can no longer make such assumptions. The past does not necessarily reflect what will happen in the future given the impacts of changes in climate and land cover and use. These changes together with changes in human populations, their age and spatial distributions, their standards of living, and their activities alter the demand for water along with the spatial and temporal distributions and amounts of runoff. Hence we face both demand and supply uncertainty where even the probability distributions of those possible values are unknown. Whatever those distributions will be, increased variability of supply is almost certain, and this in turn strengthens the argument for increased infrastructure capacities in advance of when they are needed. Some of this infrastructure, such as reservoirs and major water supply diversions, will be designed to last for the next 100 years or longer. The capacities of such projects are not easily expanded or reduced as the changes in stochastic nature of demand requirements and available supplies become more certain. One cannot monitor and then alter capacities accordingly in some adaptive framework as might be possible with respect to operating policies. How do we decide what capacities to build now that will affect our ability to serve those living in the next 100 years or so? Do we just apply engineering ‘safety factors’? This paper attempts to address this question.
- Published
- 2011
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