A Systemic Framework to Support Groundwater Development within Economic Reality

Modern society is dependent upon reliable high quality water supplies to support potable drinking water, power generation, crop production, industrial and municipal use, etc. In the central plains region, society faces groundwater deficits in many areas, where more water is being consumed than being recharged by nature. A grand challenge for the 21^st century is to support existing economic activity and societal needs while also serving our social obligation to provide for the welfare of future generations.  Development of such strategies requires modeling tools that support integration of water and society.  This presentation overviews a computation framework that has been developed at Kansas State University to address this problem.  This platform promotes understanding of the interactions and feedbacks across components of a water resources system, and provides information to aid in the decision making process.