BACKGROUND
At the Japanese Society of Hydrology and Water Resources, hydrology and its elementary processes have been studied very actively. However, water resources have not been studied so actively. Therefore, many papers on hydrology research have appeared, with only a few on water resources research.
Members of our society have desired water resources research to become more active than hydrology because of the characteristics of our society, which consists of members representing the fields of civil engineering, climate, forest, sanitary and agricultural engineering. The main issues of this interdisciplinary society are water resource problems.
In order to invigorate this field, it is necessary to promote and join not only governmental engineers, but also active young researchers. The research will contribute towards solving existing problems.
Let us consider briefly why water resource research has not previously been so active.
CHARACTERISTICS OF WATER RESOURCES SCIENCE
Water resource problems can be defined as the adjustment between water demand and water supply. Water resources demand has been determined by agricultural, industrial, peoples' living and ecological requirements. Water supply has also been determined by natural circumstances, and water use facilities are included in its operations. Therefore, research in this field requires a very wide point of view, encompassing not only natural sciences, but also the social sciences. Among the purposes of general science are to clarify the relationship between results and affected elements. For these purposes, experimental procedures have been used very effectively in laboratory science. In this science, research is carried out by dissecting the objective case into fundamental elements. Other cases can be explained from those elements. However, experimental procedures cannot be applied to water resource problems, because they cannot be split into their basic elements. In order to clarify this relationship, an analysis of existing phenomena will be required. That is, the existing phenomena must be considered as a huge prototypical case. By analysis, the relationship between the existing phenomena and the affected elements must be found. These procedures are very complicated and there is no general way of doing this kind of research. This specific procedure is called field science.
On the other hand, even if there are many cases of water resources problems, the number of existing cases is usually very restricted compared with other laboratory sciences, as, for instance, the number of cells or genes in life science. For this reason, the accumulation and summarization of case studies are more important than for other sciences.
Even though the purpose of pure science is to clarify the relationships between phenomena or results and affected elements, the original purpose of science has been to raise our living standards. Therefore, the final aim of pure science is not the final purpose for people in general-only for raising our living standard.