Future Design and Assessment of Water-Energy-Food-Environment Mega Systems (FutureDAMS)
Future Design and Assessment of Water-Energy-Food-Environment Mega Systems (FutureDAMS) is a 4-year £8 million UK funded ESRC Global Challenge Research Fund programme (October 2017 – March 2022) that aims to improve the planning and governance of integrated water-energy-food-environment systems. FutureDAMS case studies include East Africa & Eastern Nile, the Volta River Basin and Ghana, Myanmar and the Middle East and involve partnerships with local relevant organisations. To this end, the East Africa case study is in partnership with the Eastern African Power Pool (EAPP) and the Nile Basin Initiative. EAPP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the FutureDAMS research consortium to advance the work on an integrated water-energy framework and evaluate resource planning, allocation, and infrastructure assets options to help achieve sustainable development goals and progress towards the Paris Climate Change Accords.
EAPP works together with FutureDAMS interdisciplinary research consortium to design, develop and apply a technical and economic decision-making tool for integrated water-energy analysis and planning. The University of Manchester in collaboration with EAPP is developing an open-source, online energy simulator for the member countries of EAPP. By early 2022 FutureDAMS plan to combine the energy simulator with WaterStrategy (www.waterstrategy.org ) – a new and innovative generic web-based simulator for water resource system modelling – allowing intersectoral water-energy optimisation approaches with hydropower as the interface between water and energy resource systems. The collaboration includes co-simulation and co-optimisation of water and energy systems of the Eastern Nile and EAPP countries, assessment of the energy network generation adequacy, reliability, operational cost, and resilience to future climate uncertainties, and consideration of the possibility of recommending changes to operational rules.
To ensure that the web-based water-energy simulator developed under FutureDAMS benefits member countries, EAPP contributes to its co-development through providing the best available information and expertise on the energy network, including key economic, social and environmental challenges in the region. In addition, EAPP facilitates and organizes trainings and courses to support knowledge transfer from the programme across EAPP members.
You can read more about the programme at http://www.futuredams.org/
