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- The water crisis in southern Portugal: how did we get there and how should we solve itPublication . Nunes, Luís; Monteiro, José Paulo; Cunha, M. C.; Vieira, J.; Lucas, H.; Ribeiro, L.; Brebbia, C. A.; Conti, M. E.; Tiezzi, E.Until very recently, the public water supply in the Algarve region was almost entirely supported by groundwater wells. However, in the last years of the 20th Century, the Portuguese government defined a scheme for the public water supply sector entirely based on surface water from large dams, in order to guarantee the public water supply. The efforts to abandon groundwater as a source for public supply started in 1998, after a large investment in new infrastructures and rehabilitation of some existing ones. However, the practical implementation of this water supply scheme showed that an integrated resource management is needed in order to implement a more economical and reliable solution. The present paper describes the historical background and the evolution of water use in recent decades until the present time in the Algarve, and a proposal for restructuring the management of the water supplies based on the development of a decision support system within an integrated water resources management scheme.
- Optimized exploitation of aquifers: application to the Querenca-Silves aquifer systemPublication . Ferreira, J.; Cunha, M. C.; Vieira, J.; Monteiro, José Paulo; Brebbia, C. A.; Popov, V.A great deal of optimization models have been developed to support aquifer planning and management with the goal of arriving at the best decisions in relation to the number and siting of infrastructures to be built and how to operate them. A mixed-integer multi-objective linear model has been taken from the literature to define the best decision for the development of the aquifer of Querenca-Silves (Portugal). It identifies efficient solutions for the location and design of pumping stations and their catchment area to supply a given number of demand centers, without disregarding the effect of groundwater management on the piezometric surface of aquifers and the many facets of groundwater management. The multi-objective model includes two objectives: (1) the minimization of aggregate water elevation height, and (2) the minimization of aggregate water transport length, weighted by the flows conveyed from the facilities to the centers. The effect of groundwater extraction on the piezometric surface of the aquifer is modelled with a response matrix method, with the establishment of maximum drawdown to prevent over-exploitation.