Development of a cross-scale and cross-sector adaptation assessment
model integrating agriculture and water resources fields: A case study
of regional to local scale
Abstract
The gap between governmental policy and actions taken by local officials
often exists and this gap could be even more severe when it is climate
adaptation policy. On the other hand, most of existing studies tend to
pay more attention to the structure and the performance of the model
rather than the practical operation procedure. To minimize the gap and
to evaluate the effectiveness of the adaptation policy, a cross-scale
and cross-sector adaptation assessment model, Agriculture and Hydrology
assessment model (AgriHydro), is proposed in this study. AgriHydro is
established physically to embed top down policies and bottom up local
actions and combine with the standard assessment framework, Climate
Adaptation 6-Steps and Climate Risk Template, to support
decision-making. For sub-models of the AgriHydro, the Aquacrop crop
model and the system dynamic water distribution model were calibrated
and integrated to form the feedback mechanism. The weather generator
(WthGen) modular including climate change scenarios is also established
and coupled into the AgriHydro to form a fully functional adaptation
assessment tool. An actual application for analyzing the adaptation
policy for water supply and crop yield in Taoyuan City of Taiwan is
implemented due to the diversity and the complexity of Taoyuan City in
land use and water system. The results reflect the possible trade-off of
future risks between water resource and agriculture fields under
different climate and social scenarios. Moreover, this study shows that
the proposed model can provide the linkage to the standard assessment
framework, which allows a consist understanding among users on risk and
model output. This enables AgriHydro to become a practical and
operational tool for decision making and ready for further application.