WSC-Category 2 Collaborative: Robust decision-making for South Florida water resources by ecosystem service valuation, hydro-economic optimization, and conflict resolution modeling

佛罗里达州南部的水管理的特点是需要平衡多个目标。其中的目标包括维持较高的地下水位以限制海水入侵，以及也用于缓解旱季缺水的防洪措施。此外，佛罗里达州南部目前的600万人口预计将在未来20年增长到1000万，城市用水需求必须得到可靠的管理。在这个特别脆弱的地区，海平面上升和咸水入侵已经影响了饮用水的供应，并威胁到迈阿密海滩和大沼泽地等各种地势低洼和高度珍视的建筑和自然环境的完整性。需要长期的适应性战略，以确保为不断扩大的人口、农业和湿地提供可持续的水资源，这些湿地具有多种功能，包括支持佛罗里达州的渔业。利益相关者利益冲突以及技术、经济和政治挑战阻碍了此类战略的发展。该项目将进行高度跨学科的研究，利用多个机构的专业知识，调查各种气候变化、经济、人口和海平面上升情景下可持续水资源管理和土地利用规划的水文、经济、生态和人类行为维度。这项研究将采用以稳健决策为基础的水经济优化方法，以制定管理战略，确保已建成系统和自然系统的供水弹性，同时也考虑到广泛部门的用水价值。优化标准将纳入将水管理、生态功能和生态系统服务的经济价值联系起来的项目研究结果。将采用新的实验方法，以更好地了解情景信息类型和不确定性对个人和当地利益攸关方群体的决策标准选择和模型预测评估的影响。这些实验的目的是在利益攸关方结合情景预测检查水经济预测时，提高对认知和知觉偏差在决策中的作用的理解。对利益相关者评估和机构决策的比较行为分析将提供独特的见解，了解信息类型、信息内容和认知偏差如何结合起来影响风险感知，以及个人和集体福祉的感知风险如何影响情景选择。最后，在机构和利益攸关方的参与下，该项目将协作制定适应性水管理计划的建议，以促进利益攸关方的长期支持。受海平面上升、气候变化和多样化用水需求影响的沿海低洼地区，包括不断增长的人口，将受益于开发创新、务实的方法，以优化水资源配置的社会生态效益。这项研究将包括将经济学动态纳入利益攸关方对适应性土地利用和水管理战略的评估的新方法。负责管理佛罗里达州南部水资源的地方、州和联邦机构将受益于对适应性方案的分析，这些方案明确纳入了对潜在结果的不确定性估计。佛罗里达州南部存在多个社会，其管理公共水资源的选择受到气候、自然和/或法律限制，需要这种类型的综合评估来促进合作决策，同时为不确定的水文气候条件和社会经济未来做准备。

Water management in south Florida is characterized by the need to balance multiple objectives. Among the objectives are the maintenance of high groundwater levels to limit seawater intrusion and flood control measures that are also used to mitigate dry-season water shortages. In addition, south Florida's current population of 6 million is projected to grow to 10 million over the next 20 years, and urban water demand must be reliably managed. In this exceptionally vulnerable region, sea level rise and salt water intrusion have already impacted drinking water supplies and threaten the integrity of low-lying and highly-valued built and natural environments as diverse as Miami Beach and the Everglades. Long-term adaptive strategies are needed to ensure sustainable water resources for expanding populations, agriculture, and wetlands that serve multiple functions, including support of Florida's fishing industry. Development of such strategies has been hampered by conflicting stakeholder interests and technical, economic, and political challenges. This project will conduct highly interdisciplinary research, utilizing the expertise of multiple institutions, to investigate the hydrologic, economic, ecologic, and human behavioral dimensions of sustainable water management and land use planning under various climate change, economic, population, and sea level rise scenarios. The research will employ hydro-economic optimization approaches based on robust decision making to develop management strategies that ensure the resilience of water supplies for the built and natural systems, while also accounting for the broad-sector value of water use. Optimization criteria will incorporate the results of project research linking water management, ecological function, and the economic value of ecosystem services. New experimental approaches will be implemented to better understand the impacts of scenario information type and uncertainty on both selection of decision criteria and evaluation of model predictions among individuals and groups of local stakeholders. These experiments are designed to improve understanding of the roles of cognitive and perceptual biases in decision-making when stakeholders examine hydro-economic projections coupled with scenario forecasts. Comparative behavioral analyses of stakeholder evaluations and institutional decision-making will provide unique insights into how information type, information content, and cognitive biases combine to influence risk perception, and how the perceived risks to individual and collective well-being influence scenario selection. Finally, with agency and stakeholder involvement, the project will collaboratively develop recommendations for adaptive water management plans that foster long-term support from the stakeholders. Low-lying coastal regions subject to sea level rise, climate change, and diverse water demands, including growing populations, will benefit from the development of innovative, pragmatic approaches to optimizing the social-ecological benefits of water resources allocation. The research will include novel approaches for dynamically incorporating economics into stakeholder evaluations of adaptive land use and water management strategies. Local, state, and federal agencies responsible for managing south Florida's water resources will benefit from analyses of adaptive schemes that explicitly incorporate uncertainty estimates of potential outcomes. The multiple societies that exist in south Florida, whose options for managing public water resources are limited by climatic, physical, and/or legal constraints, require this type of integrated assessment to promote cooperative decision-making while preparing for uncertain hydro-climatic conditions and socioeconomic futures.