2007 Volume 30 Issue 3 Pages 70-78
This paper considers an optimal water environmental policy for the sustainable management of the basin of lake Kasumigaura and to improve the water quality of the lake. To evaluate the effects of the integrated lake basin management (ILBM) policy from the financial and environmental viewpoints, we build a regional model linked with socioeconomic and water environmental systems and derive an optimal solution with or without the ILBM policy by dynamic system simulation. Structural models of the target basin are specified, which describe socioeconomic activity and material flow balance, and the objective function is defined as a minimization problem with respect to the emission of the water pollutant (total nitrogen; T-N). We assume that the organization responsible for the implementation of the ILBM policy can collect the funds from municipalities in the basin and utilize the resources to seamlessly improve the water environment in the catchment area of lake Kasumigaura across cities, towns, and villages. The feasibility of the policy can be evaluated by system simulation.
