Water Resources Management and Planning
Climate change, population growth, and economic expansion are placing increasing pressure on the world's water supplies and coastlines, resulting in serious concerns about the environmental, economic, and social impacts of these changes. Over the past several years, RAND has built on our long experience in strategic planning to develop new innovative tools to support water resource managers' planning and decisionmaking as they confront these novel, and often unknown, future challenges.
RAND brings together cross-disciplinary research teams to evaluate these complex issues, apply innovative methods that tackle problems from multiple perspectives and address uncertainty that is often ignored, and recommend solutions that are innovative, effective, and enduring.
Research Focus
Our research develops and applies new quantitative methods and tools to support decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty. We have helped a variety of water resource management jurisdictions use scenarios and other approaches to characterize their most important uncertainties and to identify robust options for meeting their goals over a wide range of plausible futures. These tools are being applied in two key water-related policy areas:
Recent Activities and Outreach
|
Rob Lempert and David Groves present at second UCLA conference on "The Future of Water in Southern California" |
January 2012 |
|
"Managing Climate Risks in Developing Countries with Robust Decision Making" by Robert Lempert and Nidhi Kalra is published by the World Resources Institute. |
May 2011 |
|
Rob Lempert presents at "The Future of Water in Southern California: A Presentation and Discussion on the Metropolitan Water District’s Blue Ribbon Committee Report" at UCLA |
May 2011 |
|
Rob Lempert is a lead author on a special report for the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" and the IPCC fifth assessment report |
May 2011 |
|
David Groves briefs senior resource agency personnel on Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration planning at the Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, D.C. |
Jul. 2010 |
|
RAND researchers conduct workshop with water resource managers in Mexico City |
Jun. 2010 |
|
David Groves presents technical briefings on the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration prioritization tool to University of New Orleans, Louisiana State University, and University of Louisiana faculty and staff |
Apr. 2010 |
|
RAND project team holds second of four workshops at El Dorado Irrigation District evaluating options for addressing climate change and other uncertainties in the agency's Urban Water Management Plan. |
Feb. 2010 |
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2012 RAND Corporation.