ABSTRACT
A RiverWare model has been developed for the Arkansas River and Reclamation’s Fryingpan-Arkansas Project in Colorado from the headwaters near Leadville to the Colorado-Kansas state line. While originally developed as a long-term planning tool, the model has been designed to be flexible as use for short-term operational forecasting and accounting are also desired. Maintaining adaptability and transparency were also key goals as the policy and operational procedures are ever-changing and keeping the model up-to-date will be a continuing concern.
The accounting-driven operations in the basin are remarkably complex, including more than ten reservoirs and many competing and coordinating water users. At the foundation of basin operations is Colorado’s water rights system and thus RiverWare’s powerful water rights solver is employed to provide each day’s base solution by allocating native flow to over 300 unique water rights. Subsequently, the model simulates many layers of additional operations and transactions including deliveries to water users, various types of storage establishment, and several types of exchanges.
Modeling the complex policy, accounting, and operations presented many challenges and required advanced methods and rule logic to enable efficient, flexible, and transparent simulation. This presentation will give an overview of the model and discuss some of the major challenges encountered. Additionally, several of the innovative approaches and solutions utilized will be presented and demonstrated. These examples will highlight the tremendous flexibility of RiverWare and may be very helpful for modelers facing similar challenges.

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