About project

Title: A sIMulatIon framework for The plAnning and design of hydro-ecological sysTems in a changIng envirONment

Project ID: APVV-23-0332

Acronym of the project: IMITATION

Duration of the project: 07/2024 - 06/2028

Project abstract: For the purpose of environmental planning and the design in water resources engineering, reliable projections of the size and associated uncertainty of system performance are crucial. The stationarity assumption, the foundation of standard techniques for frequency analysis of extremes for system design, is violated by recent and ongoing ecological changes. The same issues arise when simulation-based planning techniques use observed hydrological time series to determine future reliability. Under gradually changing conditions, no conventional design approach based on the stationarity principle will be able to ensure the necessary and expected safety and reliability throughout the lifetime of systems. Although nonstationary frequency analysis techniques are available, assessing the safety and dependability throughout the system lifespan might be challenging under progressive environmental change. The project offers a novel framework for designing and planning hydro-ecological systems and evaluating their future safety and performance uncertainty using simulations in the time domain. It permits a gradual change in both the hydro-ecological systems' features and the stochastic characteristics of the driving hydrometeorological time series. The approach adopts hybrid stochastic-deterministic modelling concepts for simulating non-stationarity under slowly changing conditions by combining distributed deterministic rainfall-runoff models with spatially distributed stochastic weather generators. Over the system's lifetime, a succession of stepwise stationary periods will gradually imitate non-stationarity. System reliability under various scenarios will be assessed using multivariate statistical approaches for identifying differences between the baseline and progressively projected changing future system performance. It enables quantifying the risks and uncertainties associated with future failures of the hydro-ecological systems.

Key words: Weather generator, non-stationarity, ensemble simulation, climate change, landuse change, hydro-ecological system, rainfall-runoff model