Lessons from water scarcity of the 2008–2009 Gwangdong reservoir: needs to address drought management with the adaptiveness concept

Abstract

Numerous publications document increasing consensus in the scientific community that climate change will increase the severity and frequency of drought. However, constructing large infrastructures is often viewed as an unreliable and inefficient option in dealing with the problem of drought, owing to unpredictability of climate change. This study aims at illustratively presenting that there is much room to improve drought management without resorting solely to infrastructure options. The adaptiveness concept is first explained to examine the reasons of failure in drought management and appropriate options from the viewpoint of a systems approach. Thereafter, a Korean water scarcity case is defined as the system dynamics model. The model is implemented to include movement of water via the reservoir and water supply facilities, the operating rules of the reservoir, and the relation between water scarcity and customer stress. Simulation results demonstrate that adaptiveness of drought management was low because of untimely or limited options of the reservoir operator. They also show that most customer stress could be largely mitigated by two options chosen from the adaptiveness concept. It is finally concluded that drought management needs to be addressed with consideration of the adaptiveness concept before deciding solely on expansion of infrastructure upon facing challenges due to climate change.