Modelling Water Resources using Vensim PLE

This paper intends to show how easy it can be to build a prototype that will help water resources managers to make their decisions not only based on politics or economics, but also with a scientific tool that will help them easily build different weather scenarios. First we present a very simple mathematical model, that has all the potential to evolve from version to version. Its implementation was in Vensim PLE. Vensim PLE is a very easy and intuitive tool to perform simulations, being the philosophy that Vensim PLE follows to build up models of simulation very interesting and simple. It is a visual programming language based in three main entities — container variables, auxiliary variables, and fluxes. The details are hidden when you define these entities represented in a figure. In this paper we used a freeware version for students. This shows that with an available freeware version and a bit of imagination we are able to build rather interesting models to help water management.This research was financed by FEDER Funds through Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade — COMPETE and by Portuguese Funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within the Project PEst- C/MAT/UI0013/201