Hydroeconomic Optimization of Diversified Supply Sources for Water Security in Bauru (SP)

• Grant number: 25/11358-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo César Aoki Hirata
• Grantee: Fernando Schuh Rörig
• Supervisor: Roy Brouwer
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IGC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Waterloo, Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/15693-0 - Decision support system for sustainable management of water resources in addressing the problems of global climate change, BP.DD

Abstract

Growing climate variability and demographic pressures have turned water security into a global challenge, demanding strategies that balance reliability with long-term sustainability. This project aims to develop a hydroeconomic assessment, integrating hydrological modeling, empirical analyses of costs and demand, and optimization techniques, providing a framework for selecting water source portfolios that ensure supply while minimizing costs. The work is part of a Doctoral research project conducted in the city of Bauru, one of the regions most affected by recurrent water crises in the state of São Paulo. During the first six months of the research internship, the economic baseline will be established by assessing municipal water supply and demand and estimating marginal cost curves for both surface and groundwater sources. Metering data and water tariffs will be used to estimate the marginal demand curve that reflects willingness to pay for water in Bauru. In the final stage, an optimization model will be formulated to select the portfolio of interventions to enhance municipal supply at minimum total cost, while accounting for environmental constraints. The results will inform the Decision Support System (DSS) of the SACRE project (FAPESP no. 2020/15434-0), enabling the visualization of trade-offs between cost, reliability, and environmental indicators. The expected outputs include: (i) an assessment of municipal water costs and demand; (ii) an optimization algorithm; (iii) integration of results into the DSS; and (iv) two scientific publications (conference and journal). By combining hydrological modeling and hydroeconomic optimization, this project will provide transferable and robust methods for water system planning and directly support the Doctoral thesis. (AU)