Management of complex water resources systems under global change

During the last decades, in many basins around the world, water resources systems (WRS) have been developed to provide water and food security, and to cope with water scarcity and water services vulnerability. Complex WRS generally include facilities for water storage, conveyance and distribution, as well as water and wastewater treatment plants. Also, in many instances, groundwater management is an essential feature of complex WRS. Planning and management of complex WRS in water stressed basins has become more difficult due to Global Change (GC) considerations. GC includes not only Climate Change (CC), but also other changes that act as stressors of WRS. Among them, we can find unprecedented population increase rates, changes in land use, urbanization, pollution, and also societal changes and socio-political factors. This study presents different methodologies and tools used in the Jucar River Basin (JRB), in Spain, in order to incorporate GC issues. The main objectives of the work are to analyze the suitability of the different approaches and to draw conclusions and recommendations for future planning and management studies aiming to find measures to be implemented for mitigation of GC. The main focus is on water scarcity, and multiannual droughts, as essential issues in JRB, altogether with environmental objectives.