Towards sustainable water management through optimization : integrating e-flows and supporting adaptive management

Abstract

Sustainable water management faces pressure from environmental changes and competing demands. This thesis investigates how optimization modeling balances resource allocation with environmental flows (e-flows) essential for riverine health. Through three studies, the research first examines trade-offs in scale representation, proposing a framework prioritizing problem perception and transparency over result-oriented approaches. It applies these insights to the Pas River basin (Spain), demonstrating how ecological requirements translate into model parameters to manage water diversion and identify temporal trade-offs. Finally, the work evaluates optimization to integrate future climate and land-use scenarios, tracking ecological hotspots to support adaptive management. By combining a literature review with practical applications, this dissertation bridges the modeling-management interface to improve decision-making for sustainable water resource allocation.