Advancing system integration and stress testing methods in support of water availability assessment under uncertaintyproject period: 1 1 2024 through 12 31 2025THIS project, entitled advancing…

This federal Cooperative Agreement award, valued at $330,000.00, was granted by the U.S. Geological Survey under the Assistance to State Water Resources Research Institutes program (CFDA 15.805) to Cornell University. The project, titled "Advancing System Integration and Stress Testing Methods in Support of Water Availability Assessment under Uncertainty", will contribute to the Predictive Understanding of Multiscale Processes (PUMP) project by developing and demonstrating a stress testing framework for the Delaware River Basin. Cornell will advance an open-source water resources simulation model of the basin to formulate and evaluate decision-relevant water availability assessment metrics focused on reliability, resilience, and vulnerability. The core products will be an extensible, reproducible integrated stress testing modeling framework and water management tools that can inform efforts in the Delaware River Basin and serve as a basis for developing national basin-scale stress testing capabilities.

Advancing system integration and stress testing methods in support of water availability assessment under uncertaintyproject period: 1 1 2024 through 12 31 2025THIS project, entitled advancing system integration and stress testing methods in support of water availability assessment under uncertainty, is in support of the predictive understanding of multiscale processes(pump) project. The cornell water resources research institute project will contribute to the development anddemonstration of a stress testing framework on the delaware river basin (DRB). The cornellstress testing contributions to the DRB modeling and data synthesis efforts will draw heavily ondrought and vulnerability studies conducted to date to help identify risk-based metrics that willbe meaningful for water use sectors such as agriculture, municipal use, hydropower, andenvironmental flows. This research will specifically advance uncertainty modeling frameworksthat capture the drbs hydroclimatic variability plausible climate change driven shifts indrought extremes, and the impacts of land-use land-cover changes on basin wide wateravailability. The cornell team will advance an open-source water resources simulation model ofthe DRB system that includes 18 major reservoirs, 14 important river gage flow locations, twomajor out-of-basin water supply transfers (new york city and new jersey), as well as the multisectoral in-basin water demands. The water systems modeling will be used to formulate andevaluate decision relevant water availability assessment metrics focused on reliability (how oftena required performance threshold is met), resilience (how long are we below a requiredperformance threshold before recovery), and vulnerability (how far below the threshold do wego). These stress testing metrics will be applied not only to hydro-climatic drought extremes butother major multi-sector concerns such as source water protection, environmental flowrequirements, the availability use of agriculture water supply, hydropower production andmunicipal demand side management. A central goal of this project will be to pilot acomprehensive multi-objective stress testing framework that clarifies tradeoffs across thedisparate interests of stakeholders representing the water-dependent sectors previously described. The core products from this study will be an extensible and reproducible integrated stress testingmodeling framework and water management modeling tools that can inform efforts in the drbas well as serve as a basis to aid in the development in a national basin-scale stress testingcapability more broadly.