Optimization of the Scarcity State Indicator in the Jucar river basin

Scarcity status indicators help to avoid economic, social and environmental losses caused by droughts in Mediterranean basins such as the Jucar River basin. The aim of this work is to optimize the Scarcity State Indicator (SSI) in order to reproduce the scarcity periods occurring in a water resource system (WRS). The methodology used consists of using an WRS model, Aquatool-Simges, to define the scarcity periods and their magnitude. Then we computed the SSI variables and applied an evolutionary algorithm to optimize their weighting. The results show an increase of 13.7% and 78.8% in the weight of variables VE07 and EA03 respectively. In addition, a 62% success rate is obtained from the method for predicting states of normality in the basin. It can be concluded that this proposal for optimization of the EEI presents good results, although they show an anticipation of the scenarios of scarcity and false positives that will be solved in future studies.