MODELLING WATER RESOURCE ALLOCATION: A CASE STUDY ON AGRICULTURE VERSUS HYDROPOWER PRODUCTION - Economics of Sustainable Energy in Agriculture - page 164

NOTES
1 Harpman (1999) or Edwards et al. (1999) are two good examples of the treatment of
timing in the hydropower operation in the context of environmental constraints.
2 In Mediterranean climates, the volume of water available (precipitation less plants and
crops-transpiration) come fundamentally from the upper reaches of the rivers and are
minimal in the mid and lower stretches. That is to say, in our case As regards the
return flows coming from system 1, note that these correspond both to instream and non-
rival uses (minimum flow, whose rate of return flows is 1), as well as to irrigation and urban
uses (with rates of return flows of 0.2 and 0.8, respectively).
3 R and V could be state or flow variables, depending on how we use them. In our approach,
we consider their value as a fixed quantity per year and period, no matter how their
distribution along the periods are.
4 Water supply follow a stochastic process that is characterised according to a Normal
distribution. The typical dry year will be that which leaves a reduced percentage of the years
(for example, 2.5%) 'to its left'. This means that a guarantee of 100% is not considered as
possible in any case, but simply that the risk is delimited to certain lower levels in the
absence of this stochastic view.
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