Abstract
Mountain regions are facing multiple impacts due to climate change and anthropogenic activities. While shifts in precipitation and temperature are affecting the available water, current water demand for economic activities still rely on large quantity of water making mountain regions particularly susceptible to water scarcity.
These conditions call for innovative methodologies accounting for such complex interplays involved in multi-risk processes and describing climate-related water issues so to understand and adapt to future climate change impacts.
For these reasons, a literature review considered five innovative modelling approaches (i.e. Bayesian networks, agent-based models, system dynamic models, event and fault trees, and hybrid models), exploring their advantages and limitations in multi-risk assessments and providing a roadmap to enhance methodological and technical implementations for climate change adaptation.
Among these methodologies, System Dynamics Modelling (SDM) was selected and applied to explore multiple interactions and feedback loops associated to hydrological processes and human demands in the Alpine Noce river catchment in the Province of Trento (Italy).
The first application explored the vulnerability of the S.Giustina dam reservoir in the Noce catchment in terms of water stored and turbined considering conditions of water availability and demand for future climate change scenarios. By doing so, the aim was to assess the climate-related risk for the hydropower sector considering impacts of different climate change scenarios and of anthropogenic management.
The SDM model was then extended including multiple water demanding sectors of the Noce catchment to evaluate the risks of potential mismatch in future water availability and demand conditions for hydropower production, agricultural production, domestic, and ecological flow.
Results show a precipitation decrease affecting river streamflow with consequences on water stored and turbined in all dam reservoirs of the Noce catchment, especially for long-term climate change scenarios. Moreover, temperature scenarios will increase the amount of water used for agricultural irrigation from upstream to downstream. Nevertheless, decreasing population projections will have a beneficial reduction of water demand from residents, hence partially counterbalancing an increasing demand from the other sectors. Such conditions have relevant effects on the Noce catchment as a whole, considering upstream high water availability areas to downstream high water demand areas.
These results call for the need to prepare to future water availability and water demand conditions in different areas of the Noce catchment. Adaptation strategies should consider a different timely of water storing patterns together with a reduction of consumptive.
Finally, the assessment aimed to identify critical states coming from a systemic perspective of water availability and water demand in three sub-catchment areas discussing possible climate adaptation strategies to inform local decision makers and prepare for future multi-risk conditions of water scarcity.