A framework for the forensic-engineering assessment of reservoir operation during floods based on a new standard operation policy

Abstract

Floods inflict financial and human losses worldwide. The importance of assessing the effectiveness of flood management policies rises as the frequency and severity of floods increase. This study presents a novel forensic engineering framework for assessing the role of reservoir operation in achieving objectives under flood conditions. Specifically, this work develops two approaches, called the standard operation policy (SOP) and the ideal approach (IA) for the forensic assessment of reservoir-operation performance, which are compared with the historic management (HM) of reservoirs under flood conditions. This work introduces an innovative SOP for operation of reservoirs with the functions of flood control, meeting water demands, and hydropower generation. The genetic algorithm (GA) with the objective function of minimizing the maximum release from the most downstream reservoir in a multi-reservoir system is applied with the IA. The proposed framework is applied to evaluate the performance of the Seimare and Karkheh reservoirs system during floods in 2019 and 2020 in the Karkheh basin, Iran. The results show that in 2018–2019 and 2019–2020, on average, and under HM, the Seimare reservoir’s and Karkheh reservoir’s performance were respectively 28 and 68% worse than the SOP, and they were respectively 46 and 83% worse than the IA. This work’s forensic methods contribute to the practice of flood mitigation by means of reservoir operation.