9613654 9614017 Duckstein Bogardi The project is directed to the development and testing of a fuzzy rule-based model for predicting the characteristics of regional droughts and floods under global climate change. The work is divided into four tasks: 1) the construction of the fuzzy rule-based model relating the time series of daily Atmospheric Circulation Pattern CP types with flood events characteristics and drought occurrence severity index; 2) use of GCM based climate change scenarios to generate possible future time series of CP type and consequential flood and drought probabilities; 3) investigate the uncertainties in the approach and the socio-economic consequences of these uncertainties; and 4) develop and rank robust mitigating actions. The benefits from this research are expected to be: an easy-to-use model that will yield time series of possible floods and droughts under climate change that can be updated and coupled and can accept fuzzy forecasts; and inventory of social and economic consequences; an inventory of mitigation actions with a preliminary criteria ranking of these actions; and the application of the model to the upper Rio Grande and the Missouri River basins. ***