Climate change and decision support systems for water resources management in large reservoir

The issue of the management of water resources requires more and more approaches in which multiple skills and capacities are nested together (Integrated water resources management process), especially when critical situations are taken into account, such as climate change scenarios. The various disciplines involved can be climatology, meteorology, hydrology, ecology, environmental science, agricultural science, water resources engineering, socioeconomics, law and public policy. I n this context, Decision Support Systems (DSS), applied to the management of water resources, play an essential role since they must allow the different stakeholders and competencies involved to summarize results and produce decisions on a common and shared basis. The RIVER software is a DSS for water resource allocation and management which portraits the hydraulic situation in the catchment area with a simple intuitive "node-arc" sketch, at the same time uses simulation algorithms to allow the user to take into consideration many different scenarios of water use according to the principle of "priority-balanced" criteria shared by all stakeholders involved. The case study for the reservoir Montedoglio in the Tiber River Basin, highlights how these principles can be applied for a proactive management of critical scenarios in periods of drought due to climate change hypothesis. In particular, time series of hydrological flow, modulated with drought and climate trends, have been simulated and, as output of the system, indications for preventive interventions to be planned for a correct use of water for irrigation, civil and environmental use have been obtained.