Developing an integrated assessment model for salt intrusion mitigation measures in delta systems

Effective freshwater management in delta regions, especially densely populated areas like the Rhine–Meuse delta, faces a critical challenge due to seawater intrusion and salinization. Climate change significantly intensifies the risk of salty seawater encroaching into deltas, threatening freshwater quality and availability (van den Brink et al., 2019). With rising sea levels and reduced river flows, regions like the Rhine-Meuse delta are increasingly vulnerable to salt intrusion, demanding urgent actions to protect these essential resources. As climate change exacerbates this threat, addressing and mitigating salt intrusion in deltas becomes imperative for ensuring sustainable freshwater access.
The mitigation of salt intrusion involves various stakeholders—drinking water providers, ports, agriculture, industries, among others—each implementing their strategies. It has been clearly established that stakeholder engagement is essential in pursuing unified goals in integrated natural resources management (Haasnoot et al., 2013). Essentially, the involvement of stakeholders and adopting a holistic perspective are pivotal to enhancing the quality of decision-making and fostering wider acceptance of implemented strategies. In this context, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) emerges as a crucial tool (Haasnoot et al., 2014). By facilitating comprehensive system understanding and predictive capabilities, IAMs actively engages stakeholders and offers a structured framework for monitoring key indicators in environmental decision-making. Consequently, IAMs enhance decision-making processes and optimize resource allocation.
In a salt intrusion context, the importance of an IAM to support decision-making is recognized. However, exploration into how effectively IAM fosters stakeholder engagement has been limited. This study aims to address this gap by emphasizing an IAM’s crucial role within stakeholders’ involvement in salt-intrusion decision-making.
Our main objective is to identify key indicators essential for making decisions related to salt intrusion. Furthermore, we aim to explore how actions taken in one sector can profoundly affect and connect with other sectors. To accomplish this, we are developing a numerical model that integrates multiple models, each designed to address a specific aspect or key component fundamental to our objective. In this paper, we present the proposed IAM, its modules, and key indicators.