Climate change, water-related disasters, flood control and rainfall forecasting: a case study of the São Francisco River, Brazil

Abstract

Because of climate change, the frequency, intensity and/or duration of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and extreme temperatures is increasing. These events are often related to loss of property, money and life, especially in poor and developing countries where there is no or poor disaster management due to social and financial difficulties or due to a lack of synergy between the mitigation actions taken. Negative impacts can be reduced and losses can be better handled with proper water management techniques. However, these should not be handled solely with traditional management. The actual problem cannot be over simplified as merely a question of coping with resources availability and demand. Therefore, the present paper aims to summarize advances in weather forecasting and reservoir operation in the Upper São Francisco River, strategic to Brazil because it provides water to the semi-arid region and energy for economically thriving Brazilian regions. Moreover, it discusses challenges, opportunities and improvements needed to implement these advances in the current national integrated water resources management. This is mainly focused on water-related disaster mitigation.

Climate Change, Water Quality and Water-Related Challenges: A Review with Focus on Pakistan

“…Climate variability effects climate-sensitive diseases like dengue fever, diarrhea and cholera [ 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Microclimatic parameters, especially precipitation and temperature, play a key role in spreading waterborne and water-related diseases [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 ]. Microbiological, bioinformatics and genomic tools have provided some evidence that El Niño is the main key element in triggering long distance spread of cholera [ 65 ].…”

“…According to this criterion, 96 genera containing 175 species are considered to be emerging pathogens. Other than common waterborne pathogens, Helminths, Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica , Legionella, Cryptosporidium, H. pylori, E. coli O157 and viruses like norovirus, hepatitis E virus and rotavirus have been confirmed as emerging pathogens that may spread through water [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. These pathogens spread through changes in climate such as change in rainfall and global weather pattern, and deterioration in the ozone layer along with the destruction associated with UV light [ 54 ].…”

The geoengineering approach to the study of rivers and reservoirs

“…In securing water supplies, Blum (2019) shows how trapping sediment in the dams along the Mississippi has reduced the dominance of the river and influenced the downstream 'health' of the delta. Management of water through periods of drought or flooding (Germano & Castilho 2016) is a major challenge in a country such as Brazil (Kuwajima et al 2019). How will longer-term climate trends (from climate models) deal with the likelihood of increasing extreme events?…”

“…For that purpose, a robust and fast routing model is required in order to obtain quick and reliable estimates of downstream flow conditions related to release changes of the reservoir. The novel shortterm optimization approach consists of the reduction of ensemble forecasts into scenario trees as an input into a multi-stage stochastic optimization (Kuwajima et al 2019).…”

An ensemble genetic programming model for seasonal precipitation forecasting

“…The level of uncertainty in precipitation forecasting is significantly higher than the other water cycle components such as temperature and streamflow [19,38]. Consequently, the problem has been addressed in a variety of recent studies (e.g., [8,22,33,39]). Many efforts have been made over the past decades to model precipitation patterns at specific locations.…”