Integrated Water Resources Planning (IWRP)
IRWP is a comprehensive form of planning that encompasses least-cost analyses of demand-side and supply-side management options as well as an open and participatory decision-making process, the development of water resource alternatives that incorporates consideration of a community's quality of life and environmental issues that may be impacted by the ultimate decision, and recognition of the multiple institutions concerned with water resources and the competing policy goals among them. IWRP attempts to consider all direct and indirect costs and benefits of demand management, supply management and supply augmentation by using alternative planning scenarios, analyses across disciplines, community involvement in the planning, decision making and implementation process, and consideration of other societal and environmental benefits.
IWRP includes planning methods to identify the most efficient means of achieving the goals while considering the costs of project impacts on other community objectives and environmental management goals. These planning methods specifically require evaluation of all benefits and costs, including avoided costs and life cycle costs.
