Services

Water Resources Management

Water resources management agencies and water suppliers face several strategic management challenges. Limited water supply availability, growing and evolving demands, and competition among increasingly scarce financial and physical resources create difficult trade-offs for decision-makers who must plan effectively under considerable risk and uncertainty. Today’s water management environment demands innovation in dealing with the complex dynamics of physical, social, economic, and information systems.

Hazen and Sawyer’s Water Resources Management (WRM) Group specializes in decision-support for water management and planning, which provides integrative and holistic solutions to complex problems. The WRM Group is multidisciplinary team with unsurpassed qualifications spanning social, physical, and engineering sciences. The WRM Group has been involved in solving some of the most complex and sophisticated planning and management problems in the water resources industry, and has tailored unique approaches for supporting decisions and policy at local, regional, and even National scales.

INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Hazen and Sawyer provides integrated water resources management services to municipal, regional, State, and Federal markets, with emphasis along the core consulting areas of:

• Water supply planning— Maintaining reliable long-term water supplies is critical for supporting public health, quality of life, and economic activity. Hazen and Sawyer uses a trademark approach for assessing future water needs, which explicitly accounts for planning uncertainties that are driven by expectations of future demands and variability of supply source alternatives.

• Water demand management—Water that is conserved through water efficiency improvements represents a non-traditional and environmentally friendly source of supply. Hazen and Sawyer can identify water efficiency potential and formulate cost-effective demand management alternatives, including conservation and pricing strategies, to evaluate along-side hard infrastructure.

• Systems operations and management—

• Economic and environmental impact assessment –Water resources management decisions have several potential outcomes that can affect the economic viability and environmental sustainability of planning alternatives. Hazen and Sawyer are experts at estimating impacts and deriving solutions that strike an effective and defensible balance among diverse social, environmental, and economic perspectives.

DECISION ANALYTICS

Experience has shown that Integrated Water Resources Management requires a multidisciplinary toolset, which revolves around real-world decision-support. Hazen and Sawyer’s Decision Analytics services span the key dimensions that identify robust solutions to complex decisions.

• Analytical Modeling—Water resources problems and opportunities are shaped by interactions of physical, social, and economic systems. Hazen and Sawyer are experts at modeling and integrating the dynamics of these systems, using statistical and econometric methods, spatial overlays, survey data, and optimization techniques. Hazen and Sawyer has developed state-of-the-art integrated models for several water providers, including Tampa Bay Water, San Diego County Water Authority, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and others to support long-term water resources planning efforts.

• Economic Analysis—The field of economics provides fundamental decision criteria for evaluating water resources projects, as well as helpful rationales for modeling the decision-making process. Economic analysis is a cornerstone of Hazen and Sawyer’s Water Resources Management Group, where the concepts of risk, opportunity costs, marginality, and efficiency are commonly used to identify decision outcomes and to provide optimal solutions.

• Decision Science—Understanding how decisions are made in the real world not only helps one describe “what is,” but also presents a framework for guiding smart future decisions under conditions of uncertainty, diverse preferences, and trade-offs among multiple objectives. Hazen and Sawyer are specialists facilitating decision processes, using such tools as multi-criteria decision-making, real-time computer-assisted trade-off analysis, custom-designed information management systems.