Real-time hydro-economic modeling for water resources management in the Zambezi River Basin

project summary

The Zambezi River basin is the largest river basin in Southern Africa and it is one of the main water resources in the continent providing water for human consumption, irrigation of crops as well as hydropower and is shared between eight countries in Southern Africa. The basin’s water management authorities are therefore faced with the task of making tradeoffs between the competing users and riparian countries. Expected population growth in the basin as well as prediction of increased droughts in the context of climate change make the study of basin-wide water management strategies more needed than ever. The overall aim of the project is the development of a real-time water management decision support tool for the Zambezi River basin to be used by the water resources management authorities. This will be achieved through the development of a basin-scale integrated hydrologic-economic model. The main activities will be firstly the set up of a regional-scale hydrological river basin model for the Zambezi catchment using remote sensing data as input. Real-time remote sensing data will then be assimilated to the model. An economic valuation tool for real-time adaptive, economics-driven management will be integrated to the model. Lastly, the model will be applied for real-time management issues such as reservoir management, drought management and climate change mitigation. The PhD will be carried out at DTU with field work related to data collection carried out in Zambia in collaboration with UNZA. The project will build on existing DANIDA funded activities in the Water Sector Programme in Zambia, Component 3, Support to Integrated Water Resources Management.