Water resource management is a multifaceted issue that becomes more complex
when considering multiple nations’ interdependence upon a single shared transboundary
river basin. With over 200 transboundary river basins worldwide shared by two or more
countries, it is important to develop tools to allow riparian countries to cooperatively
manage these shared and often limited water resources. Cooperative game theory
provides tools for determining if cooperation can exist across jurisdictional boundaries
through a suite of mathematical tools that measure the benefits of cooperation among
basin stakeholders. Cooperative game theory is also useful for transboundary negotiation
because it provides a range of solutions which will satisfy all players in the game and
provides methods to fairly and equitably allocate the gains of that cooperation to all
participating stakeholders, if that cooperation is shown to be possible. This dissertation
applies cooperative game theory concepts to the Rio Grande/Bravo basin in North America as a case study. The Rio Grande/Bravo forms the 1,200 km border between the
United States and Mexico. A comprehensive water resources planning model was
developed for the basin including the major water users, water related infrastructure
including reservoirs, and water policy logic related to the bi-national water sharing
agreements. The water planning model is used to calculate the characteristic functions
for the cooperative game analysis. For the Water Demand Reduction Game, the largest
agricultural users, District 005, District 025 and the Texas Watermaster Section below
Falcon were defined individual players. The cooperative analysis was between the
individual players rather than the countries. In addition to the cooperative analysis,
performance measures for water deliveries were calculated to determine if water delivery
was improved to each player under the cooperative game. The results show that the
amount of additional water to the downstream players may not be large enough to induce
cooperation. The small amount of increase in water deliveries is related to the large
system losses as the water travels downstream over a long distance and a division of water under the 1944 Treaty between the United States and Mexico. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6561 |
| Date | 19 October 2009 |
| Creators | Teasley, Rebecca Lynn |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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