Preparing California Water Policy for the Future
CALVIN

Abstract:
California has roughly the 5th largest economy in the world, in a global setting with a very dynamic population and economic structure, and a dry and highly-variable climate.  It also has one of the world’s most productive agricultural sectors, responsible for about 3% of California’s economy and 80% of its human water use.  Water demands are changing. Technology is improving.  California’s already highly-variable climate is becoming warmer and still more variable.  

This presentation reviews a long-term effort by university researchers to construct an integrated planning and policy optimization model of California’s extensive and complex water supply system, called CALVIN.  The model integrates California’s surface and groundwater resources, and their variability, together with its diverse water demands, infrastructure, and water policies.  As an optimization model, CALVIN suggests an integrated portfolio of water supply and demand management actions to minimize statewide water operation and scarcity costs, within environmental, capacity, and water balance constrains over a long hydrologic time-series.  

Technical challenges include representing complex portfolios of diverse water management actions, data management and documentation, reconciling diverse sources of data, and improving modeling technology.  Human challenges include an ever-changing group of modelers and a challenging and decentralized policy and modeling environment.

Recent advances in rebuilding as open-source Python-based software, on-line documented databases, and improved methods for representing imperfect hydrologic foresight and multiple near-optima are highlighted, as well are hydro-economic implications for long-term water and drought management.  

Acknowledgement:
This work relies on the diligent and creative efforts of dozens of graduate students and professional researchers over the last 23 years, as well as the people of California and the US for funding this work.  


Bio: 

Jay Lund is a Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California – Davis.  He specializes in the application of economic, engineering, and optimization ideas and methods to water and environmental problems, as a hydro-economic approach to water management and systems engineering.  Jay is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Summary: