System Indicators

Understanding how a basin reacts to a determined decision (policy) is difficult to summarize. Usually, several parameters are selected to evaluate if a specific policy improves or worsens the water supply for environmental, system and human water requirements. As more parameters are added and with several requirements to evaluate, it gets difficult to determine if a policy improved or worsen the water management of the basin, most of the times there are tradeoffs aamong these parameters. In this research we explore methods to summarize parameters to help the understanding of results, this is very useful during the decision making process because these techniques are used during the comparison of benefits among strategies. Currently we are developing a system indicator for Folsom Lake.

One example of system’s indicator is the Water Resources Sustainability Index developed in the Rio Grande.