Groundwater and surface water models are common tools in long-range planning of water resources, and systems models are now becoming more widely used for integrated plans in which complex water resources systems are analyzed in an inclusive framework of water use, economic considerations, environmental impacts, and the preferences of stakeholders. In all of these models, however, water rights are usually extremely simplified or modeled as static constraints in the management of the system. The objective of this paper is to discuss the dynamic modeling of water rights as part of a systems model (WaterMAPS), which was developed by the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico as part of its long-range water supply program. Supply sources, including local groundwater from two separate well fields, local surface water, and a diversion from the Rio Grande, are dynamically simulated with changing hydrologic conditions, while accounting for water rights associated with each source. The systems model not only estimates the hydrology dependent availability of water sources, but also the hydrology dependence of the water accounting allocation. The WaterMAPS model emphasizes the relationship between hydrology, different supply sources, and water rights constraints. This enables the model to produce results that account for management decision impacts beyond the realm of reliability and cost components. The ability of the model to simulate the response of the system over time, as well as the probabilistic performance of the system in a given year, is critical for a multiobjective process in which surface and groundwater elements that have different timescale responses are both key decision variables.
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