ABSTRACT
Water resources planning and management engineering is concerned with conceptualizing, designing, and implementing strategies for delivering water of sufficient quality and quantity to meet societal needs in a cost-effective manner. Alternatives that can be engineered to accomplish these functions include development of new water supplies, regulation of natural sources of water, transfer of water over large distances, and treatment of degraded water so that it can be reused. The challenges for water resources engineers are: (1) to identify the essential characteristics of a given water resources problem, (2) to identify feasible alternatives for resolving the problem, (3) to systematically evaluate all feasible alternatives in terms of the goals and objectives of the decision makers, and (4) to present a clear and concise representation of the trade-offs that exist between various alternatives.
