Coupling hydrological modeling and support vector regression to model hydropeaking in alpine catchments

Abstract

Water management in the alpine region has an important impact on streamflow. In particular, hydropower production is known to cause hydropeaking i.e., sudden fluctuations in river stage caused by the release or storage of water in artificial reservoirs. Modeling hydropeaking with hydrological models, such as the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), requires knowledge of reservoir management rules. These data are often not available since they are sensitive information belonging to hydropower production companies. In this short communication, we propose to couple the results of a calibrated hydrological model with a machine learning method to reproduce hydropeaking without requiring the knowledge of the actual reservoir management operation. We trained a support vector machine (SVM) with SWAT model outputs, the day of the week and the energy price. We tested the model for the Upper Adige river basin in North-East Italy. A wavelet analysis showed that energy price has a significant influence on river discharge, and a wavelet coherence analysis demonstrated the improved performance of the SVM model in comparison to the SWAT model alone. The SVM model was also able to capture the fluctuations in streamflow caused by hydropeaking when both energy price and river discharge displayed a complex temporal dynamic.