Testing the resilience of water supply systems to long droughts

SummaryPublic water supply systems are designed to maintain water supply through extended periods of dry weather without excessive cost or environmental damage. During a drought, water suppliers can take further measures to enhance supplies or reduce demand. The introduction of drought measures is usually formalised in a drought plan, but there is often little evidence that the plan will prove successful during a range of feasible droughts. As the climate changes, recent hydrological data may be a poor guide to future drought, and planned actions may prove insufficient to maintain adequate water supplies.This paper describes a method for testing the resilience of water company drought plans to droughts that are outside recent hydrological experience. Long severe droughts of the nineteenth century provide an opportunity to test water supply system behaviour in a range of realistic droughts. The method developed combines system modelling with an interactive approach that asks water system managers to work through the actions that they would take at different stages of the drought, without knowledge of subsequent drought development.The approach was tested for two contrasting English water resource systems. In both cases, the existing water supply and drought planning measures succeeded in maintaining water supply, but significant demand restrictions and engineering measures had to be introduced. Wider use of the method by water supply planners should allow the refinement of drought and water supply plans, and will also create increased awareness of the actions necessary to manage a range of droughts.

► We test the resilience of water supply drought plans to extended droughts.
► Droughts of the nineteenth century present conditions outside recent experience.
► Reservoir models are used interactively to expose managers to an unfolding drought.
► The method is demonstrated for two UK water supply systems.
► This realistic test exposes decision points and weaknesses in drought plans.