The report is devoted to the analysis of methodological aspects of the current “Guidelines on development of integrated water use and protection master plans”. The methodology, which is used since 2007, is a thoroughly improved document, a step forward to scientific and practical grounding of methods for elaboration of the master plans, as an intermediary stage between water planning and national economy development plans.  

It addresses major water problems and includes a wide range of design tasks, with detailed description of the sequence and scope of master plan development. The Guidelines do not contain references to the methods for answering to the question “what if”. Therefore, in our opinion, the Guidelines should be supplemented by recommendations, with description of the solution of key problems, based on the up-to-date methods and technologies. This would ensure uniform grounding of the solutions proposed in the Master plans, on the one hand, and, to a certain degree, formalize development of such plans, including decomposition of the problem in general, formulation of main tasks, methods of their solution, algorithms, etc.