Pywr-WREW, a Water Resources model for England and Wales built in Python water resources simulation system
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Environmental Change Institute SoGE
Abstract
There is increasing concern about the resilience of England's water supplies, because of the effects of population growth, climate change and the need to ensure enough water for natural ecosystems. Due to these pressures, the 2014 Water Act introduced a duty "to secure the long-term resilience of water supply systems". In 2020, the Environment Agency's "Meeting our Future Water Needs: A National Framework for Water Resources" presented new evidence of the increasing pressures on water supplies, and made the case for a new framework for management of water resources, taking a large-scale systems perspective. This reflected a major step for the water industry in England, which since privatization has focussed at the level of individual water companies. However, given the challenges facing future water resources it is no longer tenable to just manage water resources at a company scale. Responding to these challenges will require large-scale infrastructure and policy interventions.
With this in mind, the University of Oxford, the Environment Agency and Ofwat initiated the National System Simulation Modelling (NSSM) project to examine, at a national scale, the resilience and benefits of potential water supply solutions and other policy decisions under different futures of climate change and demand. In the NSSM project, we developed the first national scale Water Resource model for England and Wales (WREW). This new water resource system simulation model integrates public water supplies with use of water in agriculture, power generation and other industries. Our water resource model has been used to explore different future scenarios of drought and assess the frequency, duration and severity of water shortages now and in the future. We have also explored trade-offs between different aspects of risk and the cost of alternative water supply solutions presently being considered by water companies in England and Wales.
Our evidence on the increasing pressures on water supplies has helped to make the case for a new national framework for management of water resources, taking a large-scale systems perspective rather than a company-scale approach. The WREW model is an invaluable tool for evaluating national-scale infrastructure and policy interventions, and is currently being used by the EA and Ofwat to assess strategic water resource infrastructure in England and Wales. However, WREW uses commercially licensed software and so cannot be easily and openly shared within the EA, or beyond to stakeholders in the water industry or academia.
We propose to use funding from Stream One of the Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis on DAFNI to re-build the national Water Resources model for England and Wales using the open-source generic dynamic python library Pywr. This will enable the model to be widely used by researchers and practitioners. The new model will be termed Pywr-WREW.
Development of Pywr-WREW will build on recent and ongoing research by the University of Oxford as part of the NSSM project. Hosting the Pywr-WREW simulation model on the DAFNI Platform would allow us to collaborate with our partners (e.g., the EA and water industry stakeholders) much more easily to conduct model runs and explore results together. In addition, DAFNI's state of the art computational infrastructure would improve the efficiency of our model and analysis considerably.
With this in mind, the University of Oxford, the Environment Agency and Ofwat initiated the National System Simulation Modelling (NSSM) project to examine, at a national scale, the resilience and benefits of potential water supply solutions and other policy decisions under different futures of climate change and demand. In the NSSM project, we developed the first national scale Water Resource model for England and Wales (WREW). This new water resource system simulation model integrates public water supplies with use of water in agriculture, power generation and other industries. Our water resource model has been used to explore different future scenarios of drought and assess the frequency, duration and severity of water shortages now and in the future. We have also explored trade-offs between different aspects of risk and the cost of alternative water supply solutions presently being considered by water companies in England and Wales.
Our evidence on the increasing pressures on water supplies has helped to make the case for a new national framework for management of water resources, taking a large-scale systems perspective rather than a company-scale approach. The WREW model is an invaluable tool for evaluating national-scale infrastructure and policy interventions, and is currently being used by the EA and Ofwat to assess strategic water resource infrastructure in England and Wales. However, WREW uses commercially licensed software and so cannot be easily and openly shared within the EA, or beyond to stakeholders in the water industry or academia.
We propose to use funding from Stream One of the Centre of Excellence for Resilient Infrastructure Analysis on DAFNI to re-build the national Water Resources model for England and Wales using the open-source generic dynamic python library Pywr. This will enable the model to be widely used by researchers and practitioners. The new model will be termed Pywr-WREW.
Development of Pywr-WREW will build on recent and ongoing research by the University of Oxford as part of the NSSM project. Hosting the Pywr-WREW simulation model on the DAFNI Platform would allow us to collaborate with our partners (e.g., the EA and water industry stakeholders) much more easily to conduct model runs and explore results together. In addition, DAFNI's state of the art computational infrastructure would improve the efficiency of our model and analysis considerably.
