Subject: No data for river headflows, only for total superficial water Posted: 4/17/2015 Viewed: 18998 times
Hello! I'm trying to model the water resource for Nicaragua, but I've had problems finding data on the headflows of the rivers (and their monthly variation). So far I've only been able to find information of the total surfacewater per river basin, which groups the water availability from all the rivers and lakes.
I included this as an "other supply" in WEAP for each river basin, and connected the different demand sites within each basin (both trasmission and return links). However, I'm not sure if this is a correct approach, since "other supply" does not consider the storage capacity, so even if water is returning after being used, it wouldn't consider it for other downstream demands, so basically, all the water should be available at the same time to satisfy all the demands.
Has anyone experienced something like this regarding lack of data? How have you solved it?
Also, if someone has worked on WEAP models for Nicaragua, I would really appreciate you to contact me and I would love to connect with you!
Thanks!!
Ms. Stephanie Galaitsi
Subject: Re: No data for river headflows, only for total superficial water Posted: 4/17/2015 Viewed: 18965 times
Hi Silvia,
That's a challenging problem, to only be able to find the total surface water per river basin. I'm not sure that data will support a realistic model because you really need the mass balance - how much water comes in and how much goes out. This is the annual availability of surface water, sustainably. I know in the case of the Great Lakes in the US, even though there they have an enormous volume, the actual flow in and out is comparitively quite small. Thus, if we modeled the lakes themselves as "supply" instead of the annual flow into them, they could actually dry up very quickly because of their low replenishment. I don't know the situation in Nicaragua.
When I model lakes, I use the reservoir element in WEAP - it has storage capacity (and doesn't have to mean that the lake is manmade).
Finally, you might find some folks using WEAP in Nicaragua on the Members list (under User Forum, in the left menu on this website). Select Nicaragua from the countries list at the top.
Good luck,
Stephanie
Topic "No data for river headflows, only for total superficial water"
