Optimizing water allocation under uncertain system conditions in Alfeios River Basin (Greece), Part A: Two-stage stochastic programming model with deterministic boundary intervals

The enactment of the Water Framework Directive, constituting the basis of the European water policy, introduced various challenges and complexities for water resources management. River basins are exposed to a plethora of environmental stresses, resulting in degradation of their quantitative and qualitative status. This led to the reduction of clean available water, increasing competition among water users and imposing the need for optimal water allocation for each river unit. In most countries (including those in the Mediterranean), water resources management is characterized by lack of effective operational strategies combined with the absence of permanent measuring systems and low financial means, hampering the implementation of efficient river monitoring. Therefore, water resources management is indicated by high uncertainty and by imprecise and limited data, which may be easily approximated through estimates of intervals. In the present work, optimal water allocation under uncertain system conditions is undertaken for the Alfeios River Basin (Greece) based on an inexact two-stage stochastic programming methodology developed by Huang and Loucks (2000). It combines ordinary two-stage stochastic programming with uncertainties expressed as deterministic boundary intervals. Stable intervals for optimized water allocation targets and probabilistic water allocation and shortages are estimated under a baseline scenario and four water and agricultural policy future scenarios.