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Maas-White Book Series

The Maass-White Book Series is a collection of publications dedicated to the profession of water management. The series includes:

Converging Waters:  Integrating Collaborative Modeling with Participatory Processes to Make water Resources Decisions

The third publication in the Maass-White Book Series provides a touchstone in the development of collaborative modeling for decision support, an approach to decision-making where parties negotiate agreements by communicating through a mutually developed and accepted computer simulation model.  The book builds on documentation previously available in alternative dispute resolution, Shared Vision Planning, and related areas, and complements other work recently underway.

Chapter authors from within and outside government define and describe the approach, offer case studies illustrating its application, and examine challenges and opportunities for improving water resources planning through its use.

Converging Waters:  Integrating Collaborative Modeling with Participatory Processes to Make water Resources Decisions
Editor: Lisa Bourget
Published by: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Publication date: June 2011
Purchase: GPO  | Read: pdf (2.9 MB)

The Evolution of Water Resource Planning and Decision Making

The second publication in the Maass-White Book Series was commissioned by IWR to bring together a group of the nation’s foremost water experts and academicians to provide their views on what has brought the nation to this critical juncture.

The manuscript considers the past, present and future of water resources planning. It reviews the history of water resources planning and development, the theory and practice of benefit-cost analysis, and environmental issues and options in water resources planning and decision making.

The authors look at collaboration between ecologists and economists and examine political decision making in the water resources management arena. In the final chapter, Gerald Galloway discusses “Making the transition: moving water resources planning and management into the twenty-first century.”

The Evolution of Water Resource Planning and Decision Making
Authors: Dr. Paul Bourget, Clifford S. Russell and Duane D. Baumann
Published by: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
Publication date: December 10, 2009

Decision-Making Chronology for the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project

The first publication in the Maass-White Book Series describes and explains decision-making for the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project (LP&VHPP).  It was commissioned shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States on August 29, 2005.

The report provides an explanation, as opposed to an evaluation, of how Corps policies and organization, legislation, and financial and other factors influenced the decisions that led to the LP&VHPP protective structures in place when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The focus on project decision-making is intended to complement the engineering forensics investigations on the performance of the LP&VHPP during Katrina, such as those conducted by the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force and other institutions.

Decision-Making Chronology for the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project
Authors: Douglas Wooley and Leonard Shabman
Published by: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Publication date: March 2008