The ‘WaterWare’ decision-support system for river-basin planning. 3. Example applications

Having outlined the conceptual design and planning capability in the previous two papers, the final contribution in this trilogy describes the application of WaterWare to the River Thames basin in England and Rio Lerma in Mexico. Examples are given of the real-world problems that can be addressed using this system. These include water-resource assessment, reservoir site selection, decontamination of groundwater, estimation of sustainable irrigation abstractions and derivation of required effluent-quality standards. The requirement in both cases is to provide the analytical tools to be used by the agency staff themselves for planning purposes.