Integrated Reservoir Management System for Flood Risk Assessment Under Climate Change

Abstract

Operations of existing reservoirs will be affected by climate change. Reservoir operating rules developed using historical information will not provide the optimal use of storage under changing hydrological conditions. In this paper, an integrated reservoir management system has been developed to adapt existing reservoir operations to changing climatic conditions. The reservoir management system integrates: (1) the K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) weather generator model; (2) the HEC-HMS hydrological model; and (3) the Differential Evolution (DE) optimization model. Six future weather scenarios are employed to verify the integrated reservoir management system using Upper Thames River basin in Canada as a case study. The results demonstrate that the integrated system provides optimal reservoir operation rule curves that reflect the hydrologic characteristics of future climate scenarios. Therefore, they may be useful for the development of reservoir climate change adaptation strategy.