TA-9204 THA: Strengthening Integrated Water Resource Planning and Management at River Basin Level (50023-001)

Integrated water resources management (IWWM) is a useful tool that can be used to manage all aspects of water resources, uses, and
changes in the environment. The IWRM data gathering and activities is led by the project team leader. The team leader will oversee the
coordination of all activities of the modeler, GIS specialists, and coordinator as shown in the figure below. The foundation of proposed
methodology are review of existing IWRM models and reference IWRM modeling practices of WCI from previous projects. Then, series of
stakeholder consultations and workshops shall be conducted in order to update the IWRM model. The result would be a merged reference
and existing IWRM models with updated river basin information. Corresponding trainings and workshops will be scheduled in order to
facilitate communication venue between the Department of Water Resources (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment – Thailand)
and river basin stakeholders.

Across the planning and workshop activities, the project team will include development, planning, and implementation of guidelines and
practices related to water resource shortages, emergencies, extreme events, energy issues, food and farming requirements, and among
other uses. Issues related to water shortage will consider possibilities of considering rainwater harvesting or water reuse as an option in the
IWRM. When it comes to emergency, aspects such as accidental spills to the environment is likewise incorporated in the IWRM. Certainly,
extreme events such as drought and flood are expected. Practices in order to minimize its impact or adaptation measures are also developed
which would seem application in the river basin. Energy matters revolve around proximity to users, consumption patterns, and allocation.
These are also incorporated in the overall IWRM. For farming, the water for irrigation is also included. It is important in the allocation of
water across the times of the year and studied whether in conflict with other water uses. These are best captured in a series of local
workshops in the river basin where various stakeholders are attending and consulted.

The modeler in the project team shall develop appropriate hydrological models necessary to capture the issues raised in IWRM workshops
along with data readily available. First, the existing IWRM model shall be reviewed and Yom River Basin. Such standardized set of
information from the calibrated Yom River Basin shall be used also for Mun and Chi River Basins. Data are gathered from various agencies
and organization but shall be enhanced along with new set of data. In particular, readily available data are proposed such as GIS files on
terrain, subsurface, and land use from International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM) and rainfall with climate change data
from Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS). Both of which are data centers accessible from the servers in Japan. With the assistance
of the GIS Specialist, several data such as historic climate changes, river features, and other parameters are gathered. These are displayed
graphically showing not only contrasting scenarios between past and future but also climate change impacts and dynamic river
transformations through years through thematic maps.

In the hydrologic modeling, coupling of surface water, groundwater, and solute transport models are proposed to quantify surface water and
groundwater quantity-quality interactions in the river basin. For example: SWAT is for surface water, MODFLOW for groundwater, and
MT3DMS for solute transport model in the hydrological modeling. SWAT is Soil and Water Assessment Tool. The following are the conditions
and descriptions of each of the modeling platforms being proposed.

The IWRM models will be composed of the following components: meteorological, land surface, sub-surface, demand drivers, and change
scenarios. All these components are modeled and parametrically represented in the IWRM models. The detailed descriptions of each
component are as follows:

 Meteorological component is composed of rainfall or precipitation data. It is analyzed across various spatial and temporal
combinations in order to capture the variable processes of rainfall into the environment.
  Land surface component is composed of the physical model of the terrain. It represents the river basin boundaries, slope, and
pathways. These are necessary in order to characterize the convolution of space-time behavior of water in the river basin. The
main item here is the river flow behavior, fluctuations, availability, and its changes as response to rainfall fluctuations.

 Sub-surface component is composed of all soil layers and its characteristics carefully interpreted and carefully modeled. The main
item here is the groundwater flow and behavior across different scenarios.

 Demand drivers component is composed of various uses of water in the river basin. The basic uses are for water supply, energy,
agriculture, or recreation purposes. The water supply is even divided into categories such as domestic, commercial, and industrial
uses upon which water supply network layout and schemes are deemed necessary. Energy from water is also incorporated in the
hydropower energy development. The relative position of energy demand location is critical in this part of IWRM demand driver.

 Change scenarios component is composed of defined set of baseline and alternatives. It includes alternatives that may refer to
climate change resiliency requirements, critical government directions in policies, or locally driven expected outcomes.

The GIS specialist will provide corresponding data interpretations to the hydrological modeler as input. In the end, the corresponding outputs
of all the hydrological results across the IWRM models shall be reproduced in GIS platform also. Such outputs can be made visual and ready
for workshop validation with stakeholders.