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Introduction to EPA’s Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST)
Citation:
Detenbeck, N. Introduction to EPA’s Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST). EPA Region 3 SPIRAL Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, October 23 - 24, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
This workshop is sponsored by the Sustainability Partners Incorporating Research in Academia and Localities (SPIRAL) workgroup at US EPA Region 3. SPIRAL aims to ensure more effective coordination, understanding and dissemination of ORD tools and research findings through academic and community partnerships by creating a network of Regional and ORD tool experts who enhance dissemination of ORD research products, promoting widespread use and timely input on utility of tools and future research needs, and better equipping academic and community partners to meet their sustainability and climate resiliency goals. A similar workshop will be held at Region 3 on October 24th to train sustainability coordinators from local colleges and universities.This workshop will introduce regional staff to EPA's Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST). WMOST facilitates integrated water resources management by communities, looking across stormwater, wastewater, drinking water, and land conservation practices to find the most cost-effective solutions to water quantity and water quality problems.
Description:
Version 3 of EPA’s Watershed Management Optimization Support Tool (WMOST) was released in early 2018 (https://www.epa.gov/exposure-assessment-models/wmost). WMOST is designed to facilitate integrated water management among communities, utilities, watershed organizations, consultants, and others. WMOST identifies the most cost-effective suite of management practices to meet user-designated water quantity and/or water quality goals at the HUC12 – HUC10 watershed scale, looking across potential solutions in drinking water, wastewater, stormwater (gray and green infrastructure) and land conservation programs. Goals can include maintaining baseflow or storage for drinking water and aquatic life use, minimizing peak flows and estimated flooding damage, reducing incidence of CSO events, meeting water quality criteria or pollutant load targets for TMDLs. WMOST reads in baseline hydrology (runoff, recharge) and pollutant (N, P, TSS, Zn) load time series for hydrologic response units from common watershed models (e.g., HSPF, SWAT), then calculates managed time series for different best management practices of interest to the user through linkage with EPA’s SUSTAIN tool. Optimization files are created for import to NEOS, an online server with optimization packages. Optimization output from NEOS is imported back to WMOST and summarized in graphs and tables listing the optimal types of various management practices, as well as their implementation levels and costs. Additional tools are being developed to apply WMOST as part of a robust decision-making process, including a complementary version of WMOST that uses a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to generate numerous management solutions simultaneously. These solutions reflect the tradeoffs between objectives, which represents useful information for decision-makers.