CMWRS25

Water resources systems are built and managed to support irrigation, ecosystems, drinking water, transport, local communities, and social amenities and will face substantial challenges in the future due to demographic growth, climate and social change resulting in sea level rise, more intense precipitation events, consequent augmented risk of flooding and increased demand for water resources for the agricultural and drinking sector. In addition, sewerage systems have to be taken into account from the point of view of the quantity and quality of water resources and the challenging reuse of water. On the other hand, water resources systems, in particular urban water networks, are becoming increasingly sensed and interconnected revealing new potential for efficient management of this resource. Therefore, evaluation of opportunities and constraints around the management of water resources systems requires an integrated systems approach that takes into account the fundamental drivers, impacts, and multi-purpose nature of the system of interest. These systems are hugely complex: they are nonlinear, affected by long-term dependencies and extreme events, providing services to stakeholders with competing interests. Engineers and researchers working in multidisciplinary fields that include control theory may find many challenges here. As social and environmental conditions will change in the future, also affecting the proper functioning of systems of crucial interest to society, adaptive and robust management techniques are needed to properly manage those systems in the future, also considering health and inequality issues, especially in countries where those are relevant.