The Water Accounting course provides an introduction to modeling water ownership, water type, and/or water rights using RiverWare’s Water Accounting solution approach. This will allow you to track both the physical water and the “color” of the water, often called “paper” water. This class requires a basic understanding of the simulation and rulebased simulation techniques.

You will learn how accounting works to model water ownership or type within any basin. We will show you how to run an accounting model and view results. You will convert a pure simulation model into an accounting model by creating accounts, selecting accounting methods, and linking them to represent how water can be transferred throughout the basin. We will explain how to use rulebased simulation to access and set accounting values as necessary in a basin that is driven by ownership or type. The class culminates in an interactive exercise where you learn about the priority date based water rights allocation solver and apply it to a sample basin using the accounting system.  Finally, we show you how to debug the system and present additional utilities that you can use to analyze the solution.

This class has been taught for over 9 years by the RiverWare research and development team and has consistently received positive feedback. Both the Introduction to Simulation Modeling and the Rulebased Simulation Modeling courses are prerequisites for registering for this class.