Authors: Ehsan Ebrahimi, Pin Shuai – Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University; Enrique Triana – RTI International
Title: Enhancing Water Management Modelling through Extended Hydrofabric
Abstract: Effective water management is crucial for sustainability, especially given the increasing pressures of climate change and growing human demands. Current hydrologic models, such as the USGS National Hydrologic Model (NHM) and NOAA NWM, do not adequately account for human activities like water diversion, groundwater pumping, and reservoir management, which significantly affect streamflow prediction and watershed management, as the existing hydrofabric only represents the natural flow system without incorporating water management infrastructure. This project aims to address these gaps by integrating water management models (WMMs) with hydrologic models using an extended hydrofabric, standardized inputs, and automated workflows. Multiple water management infrastructures have been successfully incorporated into the extended hydrofabric, focusing on a headwater watershed of the Upper Colorado River basin. This includes the addition of Points of Diversion for different water uses, which have been carefully curated to include necessary and permanent or semi-permanent features. Additionally, we have established a comprehensive database that stores optional data, such as upstream flow and historical water uses, retrieved from sources including the USGS, Water Data Exchange, and Colorado’s Decision Support Systems, supporting the hydrofabric and providing a robust framework for developing water management models. Building on the enhanced hydrofabric and database, we manually created a functional WMM with MODSIM, serving as a proof of concept for effective water management planning and simulations. This model has allowed us to quantify the effects of human water uses on streamflow within the modeled watershed. Future work will focus on streamlining the data acquisition process through relational databases and automated workflows to gather, standardize, and integrate diverse datasets from various federal and state agencies. Additionally, we will develop open-source software tools to facilitate the efficient preparation of WMM inputs, automating the extraction and manipulation of network and water use data from the extended hydrofabric.