Seminar: Thursday Feb 28, 2008 3:30-4:30pm, Walker-Ames Room (Room 225 Kane Hall)

Seminar: Thursday Feb  28, 2008   3:30-4:30pm,   Walker-Ames Room  (Room 225 Kane Hall)

Speaker: Dr. Rick Palmer, Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Washington

Will become the new Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Amherst in Spring 2008.

Title: Incorporating Climate Change into Regional Water Supply Planning:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Abstract:

Since the 1970's, water resources professionals have sought to successfully engage

stakeholders in water resources planning and management. Like many other forms

of Civil Engineering, water resources planning and management concerns public

investments that are long-lived and which have significant impacts on both the natural

and constructed environment. In addition, the values of stakeholders often conflict

requiring negotiated agreements.

This talk describes a stakeholder driven process that attempts to incorporate climate

change information into regional water supply and demand projections. The process

involves the geographic area of King, Snohomish, and Pierce Counties. In this process,

five sub-committees were created by the Regional Water Supply Planning Coordinating

Committee to investigate a wide range of issues. The goal of the Climate Change

Committee was to develop a set of meteorological and hydrological data that could be

easily accessed and used by others in the planning process to quantify the likely impacts

of climate change.

This talk summarizes the accomplishments and challenges of incorporating climate change

forecasts into decision making. Water resource managers in the region recognize the

need to incorporate climate change into their evaluations and have worked together, across

agency boundaries to ensure that this is accomplished. The data generated by the committee

has been used by utilities to calculate the impacts of climate change on system yields and

water demands. In all of the analyses, the impacts of climate change were shown to decrease

water supply availability and to increase water demands. The challenges of the planning

process are discussed, including identifying and engaging stakeholders, generating

consensus among the participants, creating appropriate research tools and results,

and incorporating the results into regional decision making.

1972 BSCE Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas

1973 MSEnvironmental Engr Stanford University, Stanford, California

1979 PhD John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

http://www.tag.washington.edu/people/palmer.html