ENGINEERING

HYDROLOGY

6 | Role of Hydrology in
Water Resource
Management
6.3 | Water Resource
The importance of hydrology is increasing because of the global
Planning, Design,
growth of water needs and the rise of water scarcity, which
Management,
together cause greater risk and unreliability in water resources
and Protection
management.

Water resource
• Planing is where the sources and consumers are identified, the
overall "architecture" of a proposed system is laid out, including
its topology and connectivity.

Management • Design is where sizes of facilities are fixed.

• Operational policy determines the operation of the system under

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES a selected forecasted set of typical and/or critical conditions,
while real-time operation means setting the operational variables
• Discuss the concept of Water for a defined time period ahead (hour, day, week, month, year).
Resource Management.
• Management is the process of administering and controlling
• Discuss the relationship of
Hydrology and Water Resource organizations and facilities used in the water sector.
Management.
• Water source protection involves the protection of surface water
sources  (e.g. lakes, rivers, man made reservoirs) and
groundwater sources (e.g. spring protection, dug well protection,
and drilled well protection) to avoid water pollution (see also
pathogens and contaminants).
what is water resource management?
Water Resource Management (or WRM) is defined by the
World Bank as the “process of planning, developing, and
managing water resources, in terms of both water quantity
and quality, across all water uses”. It includes the
institutions, infrastructure, incentives, and information
systems that support and guide water management.
According to the World Bank, water resources
management seeks to harness the benefits of water by
ensuring there is sufficient water of adequate quality for
drinking water and sanitation services, food production,
energy generation, inland water transport, and water-
based recreational, as well as sustaining healthy water-
dependent ecosystems and protecting the aesthetic and
spiritual values of lakes, rivers, and estuaries.
Water resource management also entails managing water-
related risks, including floods, drought, and contamination.
The complexity of relationships between water and
households, economies, and ecosystems, requires
integrated management that accounts for the synergies
and tradeoffs of water's great number uses and values.
One of the goals of water resource management is water
security. It is not possible to ‘predict and plan’ a single path
to water security for rapidly growing and urbanizing global
populations. This is due to climatic and non-climatic
uncertainties. To help strengthen water security, there is a
need to build capacity, adaptability and resilience for the
future planning and management of water resources.
According to the World Bank, achieving water security in
the context of growing water scarcity, greater
unpredictability, degrading water quality and aquatic
ecosystems, and more frequent droughts and floods, will
require a more integrated and longer-term approach to
water management. This is in essence what water resource
management is about: bringing together multiple
organisations, across different disciplines to plan for future
water usage holistically.
hydrology and water resource management
Water resource management includes consideration of
several disciplines of hydrology, including the global water
cycle, surface water and groundwater, water chemistry and
pollution and aquatic biology. This is according to S.J.
Marshall in his Hydrology module in Earth Systems and
Environmental Sciences.
The balancing act involved in water management includes
a broad range of stakeholders and includes water policy
and legal experts. Hydrologists have essential input to
t h e s e c o m p l e x a n d s o m e t i m e s c o n f ro n t at i o n a l
deliberations and negotiations. They also play a central
role in applied hydrology – engineering of major
waterworks to manage water. Water distribution systems
have been a hallmark of civilization since Babylon, and the
modern stamp on this includes major hydroelectric dams
and reservoirs, urban waterworks, and water treatment
facilities.
Hydrological data of different types are required,
according to the management issue being addressed.
They range from short term now-casting/forecasting for
real-time operation and response, e.g., for flood
protection, to long-term time probabilistic series and
ensembles for planning, which consider changing natural
and anthropogenic drivers (land use, climate change).
Since hydrology is a continuous process that is not divided
internally according to the needs of management, the
hydrological analysis must be geared to produce the
suitable information for the different management issues.
Hydrology is the backbone of Water Resources
Development. Water Resources development deals   with
judicious usage of water resources which essentially can be
assessed when we have adequate information of basin
water surplus which again, essentially can be determined
through assessing precipitation, runoff,   overland flow,
base flow in dominant drains (rivers)   and interceptions
(for assessing ground water reservoir). For this, one has to
be adept in hydrology and adequate understanding of
hydrological   cycle prevailing in the chosen catchment
where water resources has to be developed.