Implementation of holistic water resources-economic optimization models for river basin management – Reflective experiences

A holistic model embeds water resources and economic components into a consistent mathematical programming model, with the objective of maximizing economic profits from water uses in various sectors. Such a model can be used to address combined environmental-economic issues. Although holistic modeling represents a simple approach for building truly integrated water resources and economic models, it faces many difficulties in terms of temporal and spatial scale issues and model formulation, calibration, solution and result interpretation, as well as extensive data requirement. This paper addresses the difficulties involved in large-scale holistic modeling for integrated river basin management, and provides solution methods taking a self-reflective stance through a prototype model. This paper is a methodological paper for practitioners who are interested in integrated water resources-economic modeling.