WASKlim

Water provision adaption strategies to climate change - WASKlim

On behalf of the German Federal Environmental Agency, UFOPLAN-Project

Presented by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus Disse

The assignment of WASKlim is at one hand the support of the development process of the german adaption strategy to climate change. It contains the evaluation of a survey by the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMU), which was questioning the federal government, state government and associations in the summer of 2007. The aim of the questioning was amongst others to evaluate the adaption strategies that already have occured and that are necessery, and how sectors and regions are concerned by the effects of climate change.

At the other hand WASKlim should develop a precise method to determine the adaption capacity and vulnerability for the sector watermanagement. As these terms can not be captured by exact mathematical relations, Fuzzy-logic could be used, which was already applied successfully for flood prediction at Universität der Bundeswehr München (Institute of hydro sciences) (Disse et al. 2007a, b).

The composition of a complex fuzzybased regime for decision support permits to quantify the effects of mutated (climate) boundary conditions and anthropogenic (adaption) strategies.
The system for decision support first is developed and tested exemplary for three test areas in Germany: the headwater of Iller (Bavaria, Alps/foothills of the Alps), the river Wupper (North Rhine-Westphalia, low mountain range) and the stream Salza (Saxony-Anhalt, arid environment). The WASKlim test areas are characterized by current and potential intense conflicting use between water management and other sectors.
In the framework of the development of the decision support system furthermore model simulations of water balance in the test areas, including scenario simulations until the year 2100, were held with WaSiM-ETH (Schulla and Jasper 2007).

Based on these results adaption strategies for water management in the three test areas are developed. They should help to avoid conflicting use due to climate change, and to make a contribution to investment decisions in the sector of water management against the background of prospective mutated boundary conditions.

Here you can take a look to the poster (in German language): here