Preparing for an Uncertain Future Climate in the Inland Empire: Identifying Robust Water-Management Strategies

Publication Date: January 2008

Publisher: RAND Corporation

Author(s): Debra Knopman; Robert J. Lempert; David G. Groves; Sandra H. Berry

Research Area: Environment

Type: Brief

Coverage: California

Abstract:

Water managers face significant uncertainties about future water-management conditions, including precipitation and temperature patterns that may be changing in response to global climate change. As part of a multiyear study on climate-change decisionmaking under uncertainty, RAND researchers are working with water agencies in California to help them better understand how climate change might affect their systems and what actions, if any, they should take to address this challenge. This briefing augments a recent RAND report, Presenting Uncertainty About Climate Change to Water-Resource Managers: A Summary of Workshops with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, and describes the last of four workshops held with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency in Southern California. In this briefing, the RAND team presents an analysis, based on robust decisionmaking methods, of how different adaptive water-management strategies may reduce the vulnerability of the region to climate change and other planning uncertainties.