The costs of uncoordinated infrastructure management in multi-reservoir river basins

cg.contributor.affiliationInternational Water Management Instituteen
cg.contributor.crpWater, Land and Ecosystems
cg.coverage.countryLaos
cg.coverage.iso3166-alpha2LA
cg.coverage.regionSouth-eastern Asia
cg.creator.identifierGuillaume Lacombe: 0000-0002-3882-2697
cg.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/105006en
cg.identifier.wlethemeDecision Analysis and Information
cg.identifier.wlethemeManaging Resource Variability and Competing Use
cg.issn1748-9326en
cg.issue10en
cg.journalEnvironmental Research Lettersen
cg.river.basinMEKONGen
cg.river.basinNAM NGUMen
cg.volume9en
dc.contributor.authorJeuland, M.en
dc.contributor.authorBaker, J.en
dc.contributor.authorBartlett, R.en
dc.contributor.authorLacombe, Guillaumeen
dc.date.accessioned2015-03-17T14:39:57Zen
dc.date.available2015-03-17T14:39:57Zen
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/58419
dc.titleThe costs of uncoordinated infrastructure management in multi-reservoir river basinsen
dcterms.abstractThough there are surprisingly few estimates of the economic benefits of coordinated infrastructure development and operations in international river basins, there is a widespread belief that improved cooperation is beneficial for managing water scarcity and variability. Hydro-economic optimization models are commonly-used for identifying efficient allocation of water across time and space, but such models typically assume full coordination. In the real world, investment and operational decisions for specific projects are often made without full consideration of potential downstream impacts. This paper describes a tractable methodology for evaluating the economic benefits of infrastructure coordination. We demonstrate its application over a range of water availability scenarios in a catchment of the Mekong located in Lao PDR, the Nam Ngum River Basin. Results from this basin suggest that coordination improves system net benefits from irrigation and hydropower by approximately 3–12% (or US$12-53 million/yr) assuming moderate levels of flood control, and that the magnitude of coordination benefits generally increases with the level of water availability and with inflow variability. Similar analyses would be useful for developing a systematic understanding of the factors that increase the costs of non-cooperation in river basin systems worldwide, and would likely help to improve targeting of efforts to stimulate complicated negotiations over water resources.en
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Access
dcterms.available2014-10-10
dcterms.bibliographicCitationJeuland, M.; Baker, J.; Bartlett, R.; Lacombe, Guillaume. 2014. The costs of uncoordinated infrastructure management in multi-reservoir river basins. Environmental Research Letters, 9(10):1-10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/10/105006en
dcterms.issued2014-10-01
dcterms.languageen
dcterms.licenseCC-BY-3.0
dcterms.publisherIOP Publishingen
dcterms.subjectriver basin managementen
dcterms.subjectreservoirsen
dcterms.subjectcostsen
dcterms.subjectwater resourcesen
dcterms.subjectwater poweren
dcterms.subjecthydrologyen
dcterms.subjecteconomic aspectsen
dcterms.subjectmodelsen
dcterms.subjectinfrastructureen
dcterms.subjectflood controlen
dcterms.subjectirrigationen
dcterms.subjectdamsen
dcterms.typeJournal Article

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