Publication Highlight: Valuing Combinations of Flexible Planning, Design, and Operations in Water Supply Infrastructure

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Climate change uncertainty can significantly impact the long-term performance of engineered water systems, necessitating flexible and adaptable infrastructure approaches. In a recently published Water Resources Research paper, authors Keani Willebrand, Jenny Skerker, Dr. Marta Zaniolo, and Dr. Sarah Fletcher develop a new framework to evaluate the value of different combinations of flexible planning, design, and operations in mitigating water supply reliability risks and costs. They co-optimize dam development and operating policies under climate uncertainty and apply their approach to a new reservoir project near Mombasa, Kenya. Their findings suggest that that flexible operations are the most effective in balancing water supply reliability and total cost over the century. Flexible planning and design are found to be valuable under certain planning conditions, such as small initial dam capacities and high discount rates.

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