Managing Water as a Critical Component of a Changing World

It once seemed that all water managers had to do was to develop and manage infrastructure necessary to convert the natural spatial and temporal distributions of water and its quality to that desired by we humans at acceptable levels of reliability and cost. We are increasingly learning there are limits to achieving such goals, and the consequences can impact just about every component in our economy and society. We’re having to conserve, treat, reuse, find alternatives for and generally get smarter about how we develop and manage our natural resources. Furthermore, we must do it in a political environment of conflicting stakeholder expectations and in ways that minimize the damage to our natural environment as well. No one wants their behavior or life style to contribute to an environment of climatic extremes and regional conflicts that are outside the ranges we and our ecosystems can thrive, or even survive. If we who are in the business of developing and applying models for identifying and evaluating ways of improving how we plan, design, and operate water resources infrastructure systems do not address these broader global environmental and social issues, even partially, and in ways that lead to beneficial impacts, and reduced risks to health and economic security risks, what’s our value? Our literature, including this journal, is full of novel and often useful modeling approaches for identifying and evaluating alternative environmental resource systems designs, plans and policies. Is this enough? This paper addresses ways we might, and in my opinion should, as a discipline, extend our planning and management modeling expertise to address a wider range of societal concerns that stem from the impact water has on almost all human activities. How can we better provide and manage water to better serve society? In short how can we water systems analysts, planners and managers better serve humankind as we manage a critical resource everyone and every economy needs?