Calibrating holistic water resources-economic models

This paper presents an approach to calibrating a holistic water resources-economic model, which involves essential water resources and economic components in a consistent model. The model is formulated as an optimization model, with the objective of maximizing economic welfares/ profits from water uses. When we apply the model to a baseline scenario against real-world conditions, the economic outputs are often expected to match the observations at the base level, since a wide divergence between model outcomes and actual results is not appropriate for analyzing policy options starting from the baseline. Following the concept of positive mathematical programming the holistic water resources-economic model is calibrated to a baseline level using programming constraints and positive inferences from baseline observations. The calibration task is complicated by the fact that a large number of interdependent parameters should be calibrated simultaneously. A numerical approach based on hybrid genetic algorithms is used to implement the calibration procedure.