Thailand has a well-developed legal and administrative framework for implementing Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and has pioneered IWRM in the region. As part of its focus on IWRM, Thailand has adopted the principle of decentralisation, established river basins as planning units for water management, and established River Basin Committees (RBCs). The Department of Water Resources (DWR) is mandated to take a key role in basin planning, acting as secretariat to the RBC’s and providing technical support for their activities.

Catchment models are essential supporting tools for the development of basin plans. A catchment modelling tool provides a mathematical representation of the real-world catchment that enables better understanding of the current situation and the running of scenarios to understand potential impacts resulting from potential water management actions.

TA-9204 THA: Strengthening Integrated Water Resources Planning and Management at the River Basin Level aimed to meet DWR’s request by improving the accuracy and usability of an integrated modelling package for use in Thailand, and further developing the capacity of river basin personnel in basin planning and use of the model.

The project undertook a range of model development, model application, training and stakeholder engagement to achieve its overall outcome of increased capability for integrated river basin planning in Thailand.

Alluvium worked with the lead partner, International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM) to implement the project.