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Eshenbach, E., E. Zagona and K. Grantz. “Water Resources Planning and Management Curriculum Incorporating RiverWare,” Proceedings of ASCE Operations Management 2006—Operating Reservoirs in Changing Conditions, 2006.

Abstract

Multiple reservoir management requires the consideration of competing demands for the water for irrigation, domestic consumption, hydroelectric generation, recreation, transportation, and ecosystem management. Such management requires sophisticated tools along with well educated personnel. Many point to the need for universities and professional societies to partner to assure that newly educated professionals will be available.

This paper described water resources planning and management curriculum that incorporates the river basin modeling package RiverWare. RiverWare is a flexible general river basin modeling tool that allows water resources engineers to both simulate and optimize the management of multipurpose reservoir systems for daily operations as well as for planning studies. The curriculum was developed by faculty and staff at Humboldt State University and University Colorado Boulder. In the fall of 2005, ten Environmental Resources Engineering seniors at Humboldt State University experienced the RiverWare curriculum in ENGR 445, Water Resources Planning and Management. RiverWare assignments were developed for the following topics: storage yield analysis, firm yield/firm water, storage allocation zones, rule curves, operation rules, operation of multi-purpose reservoirs, and hydropower concepts. These assignments are further described as well as students' responses to the RiverWare tutorials and assignments. By the end of the semester, students had enough expertise to develop their own models. One student developed a rule curves model of the Shasta and Keswick reservoirs in Northern California. Finally, the paper describes further planned curricular developments. This curriculum is available at no cost for faculty that want to teach Water Resources Planning and Management using RiverWare. The authors anticipate receiving valuable feedback on the content of this curriculum from conference attendees.