Water Resources Planning – A Research Program

A research project on “Methodologies for Water Resources Policy Analysis” is under current development at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering, Portugal. Its main objectives are to develop and test techniques, computational tools and procedures which may help in the design of water resources plans, in the comparison and evaluation of alternative strategies and in real time drainage basin management and operation. In order to achieve these objectives the technical activity of the project has tackled such water resources problems as the assessment of water availability and demands, the characterization of river water quality and wastewater, water pollution control and river water quality modeling. Also, effective technology transfer from technicians to local, regional and national managers and decision-makers has been tried. In this paper, the main project activities are summarized, some of the achievements are pointed out and its most significant results are presented.