Stochastic Simulation and Optimization of Water Resources

Dear Colleagues,

Modern approaches in water resources management imply the need for sustainable and resilient technical solutions, supported by effective water policies and governance, which reconcile the needs of society with those of nature. In order to achieve this goal, the proposed solutions owe to take into account the multiple uncertainties, complexities and conflicts that span over all aspects of water resource systems, aiming to serve their inherently multipurpose character. The running paradigm to handle this problem is the stochastic simulation – optimization framework, which combines probabilistic/stochastic methods for representing uncertainties, simulation models of varying levels of detail for modelling complex hydrosystems, and optimization techniques to detect optimal and well-balanced solutions across conflicting objectives.

This special issue invites research or review articles, as well as integrated case studies, discussing the state-of-the-art methods and tools in the broader field of water resource systems, also including cases within the water-energy nexus. Particular topics of interest are:

• Recognition, modeling and interpretation of uncertainty sources and their dependencies;
• Performance assessment under the concepts of change and risk;
• Modern simulation-optimization solutions built upon recent advances in hydroinformatics (e.g., emulation models, machine learning, digital twins);
• Effective and efficient coupling of different modelling philosophies (physically-based, conceptual, data-driven, stochastic);
• Systematic representation of socioeconomic aspects across the water cycle;
• Propagation of uncertainty and multi-criteria optimization within real-world decision-making (design, operation, management);
• Scalable methods from the long-term planning to the real-time control.
• Software solutions for scholars and practicians.

Dr. Ioannis Tsoukalas
Dr. Andreas Efstratiadis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• uncertainty
• long-term planning
• real-time control
• water-energy nexus
• sociotechnical systems
• multicriteria optimization
• performance assessment
• model coupling
• software