Modelling coupled human-water systems: Characterising human-water interactions and their impacts on future water scarcity

据预测，到2050年，由于气候变化以及人口增长和社会发展带来的需求增加，英国将面临严重的供水短缺。因此，至关重要的是，我们必须预测未来水资源可能如何变化，以确保有足够的水供应用于饮用、粮食、能源生产和社会发展。尽管人-水相互作用（如水库储存和灌溉）对淡水资源有影响，但以前只有稀疏的数据可用于表征人-水利用，这些相互作用在水文模型中经常被忽略或以粗空间分辨率表示。该博士学位将提供对人与水的相互作用及其对河流流量的影响的新理解，为政策和决策者提供对（未来）水资源短缺的可靠评估。该项目的总体目标是量化人类用水和气候变化对英国未来水资源短缺的影响，通过开发新的工具来模拟地方和国家尺度上的耦合人类-水系统。这将包括以下目标：建立一个综合建模框架，将水文气候过程与跨多个尺度的人类-水系统结合起来。这将通过将(1)地下水和地表水提取，(2)水库和(3)回流纳入破译（Coxon等人，2019）来实现。从历史水文气候和人类用水数据中描述人类用水的行为模式，以检查自然-人类水通量之间随时间的相互作用和反馈。利用高分辨率区域气候模拟组合（如UKCP18、MaRIUS干旱事件集）、能够模拟潜在气候变化情景（如STORM）的随机降雨发生器和来自社会经济数据集的未来水需求情景，项目人类用水和气候对未来缺水的影响。将利用敏感性分析技术确定人类用水和气候变率对未来水资源短缺的权衡、相互作用和重要性。我们希望这些目标能够随着学生的兴趣而发展，并随着学生对研究的所有权的发展而完善研究目标。学生将有机会在威塞克斯水务公司进行为期三个月的实习，以确定在学生攻读博士学位期间开发的工具和水资源短缺预测如何用于未来水资源规划的决策。

By 2050, it is projected that England will be facing severe water supply shortages due to climate change and increasing demand from growing populations and societal development. Consequently, it is vital that we predict how water resources may change in the future to ensure adequate water supplies for drinking, food, energy production and societal development. Despite the impact of human-water interactions (such as reservoir storage and irrigation) on freshwater resources, only sparse data have previously been available to characterise human-water use and these interactions are often neglected in hydrological models or represented at coarse spatial resolution. This PhD will deliver new understanding of human-water interactions and their impacts on river flows to provide robust assessments of (future) water scarcity that are essential for policy and decision makers. The overall aim of this project is to quantify the impacts of human water use and climate change on future water scarcity across the UK by developing novel tools for the simulation of coupled human-water systems at both local and national scales. This will encompass the following objectives: Build an integrated modelling framework that couples hydro-climatic processes with human-water systems across multiple scales. This will be achieved by incorporating (1) groundwater and surface-water abstractions, (2) reservoirs and (3) return flows into DECIPHeR (Coxon et al, 2019). Characterise behavioural patterns of human-water use from historical hydro-climatic and human-water use data to examine the interactions and feedbacks between natural-human water fluxes over time. Project human-water use and climatic impacts on future water scarcity using high-resolution, regional climate simulation ensembles (i.e. UKCP18, MaRIUS Drought Event Sets), stochastic rainfall generators capable of simulating potential climate change scenarios (i.e. STORM) and future water demand scenarios from socio-economic datasets. Trade-offs, interactions and the importance of human-water use and climate variability on future water scarcity will be determined using sensitivity analysis techniques. We expect these objectives to evolve in line with the student's interests and for the student to refine the research objectives as their ownership of the research develops. The student will have the opportunity to do a three month placement at Wessex Water to determine how the tools and water scarcity projections developed during the student's PhD can be used for decision making on future water resource planning.