We help decision-makers manage scarce water resources, (e.g. balancing competing uses, weighing infrastructure choices, and preparing for climate change) using tools and techniques that link the physical water system to its economic and social dimensions

The challenge

Water is an increasingly critical factor in achieving food security, energy security, and sustaining ecosystems. As the world’s population keeps growing, so does demand for food, water and energy. Many river basins are now over-exploited or dangerously close to the threshold of renewable water resources, leading to economic losses, environmental degradation, and declining food and energy security.

Local interventions are harder to plan than ever: they generate third-party impacts elsewhere in the basin that are difficult to predict. And as our consumption of fossil fuels continues to reshape the atmosphere, the interdependencies between water, food, energy and the environment are only tightening.

Our approach

Water management has traditionally centered on infrastructure: siting, designing, building and operating the systems that deliver water where and when it’s needed, at reasonable financial, social and environmental cost. But as infrastructure costs keep rising, non-structural measures such as water pricing, inter-sectoral transfers, are playing a growing role alongside it.

We build and apply hydro-economic models that integrate hydrologic, engineering, institutional and economic processes into a single picture of a water system. This lets us show policymakers and stakeholders (e.g. power companies, water utilities, conservation organizations) how a management decision in one part of the system ripples through the rest of it, and vice-versa.

Examples of problems we help clients solve

Water allocation & policy

• Determining efficient and equitable water allocation policies between competing uses for UN-FAO in the Euphrates-Tigris and the Senegal River basins
• Assessing tradeoffs between competing uses for the World Bank in the Zambezi River basin
• Determining the economic value of water in complex water resources systems (Euphrates-Tigris, Zambezi, Senegal, Canada)

Infrastructure and operation

Climate & vulnerability

• Adapting the operation of water resources systems to climate change (e.g. Quebec’s government, OMVS in the Senegal River basin)
• Assessing water users’ vulnerabilities to climate change (the World Bank in the Zambezi River basin)

Transboundary