WS-15: Foster water management research

Encourage collaborative programs with local universities—including the Compact’s partnership with the Florida Climate Institute—to improve community and stakeholder communication and education efforts regarding potential local and regional climate change impacts.

Build partnerships and technology exchanges with public, private, academic, domestic, and international partners to bring additional experience and innovation to resilience planning, projects, and decision support.

Continue to encourage, foster, and support collaborative investigative work and scientific research that improves water resource management, including:

1. Downscaling global climate models to represent precipitation patterns at the regional and local scale and to develop standardized precipitation scenarios for the region.
2. Identifying and targeting gaps in monitoring and data availability (e.g., light detection and ranging, environmental and water quality data, or data supporting regional climate indicators) to improve the quantification of the hydrologic system and its response to climate change (e.g., evapotranspiration, surface and groundwater levels, water quality, precipitation, and local sea level) through local program efforts, agency collaborations, and advocacy for additional state and/or federal resources, as needed.
3. Developing integrated risk-based decision-support tools and processes for application in the analysis and selection of infrastructure design, water resource management, natural systems management, and hazard mitigation alternatives. Tools should facilitate the consideration of the potential economic costs of comparative planning scenarios, management decisions, and infrastructure investments, as well as the evaluation of potential trade-offs.