Abstract
As more and more water projects are built on rivers, the flood control operation becomes more complex. Studies on the optimal flood control operation are very important to safeguard human life and property. This study focused on optimizing the operation of a complex flood control system composed of cascade reservoirs, navigation-power junctions, flood storage areas, and flood control points. An optimal model was established to jointly maximize flood peak reduction rates of downstream flood control points. A hybrid algorithm named the Dynamic Programming-Progressive Optimality Algorithm (DP-POA) was used to solve this model, and the middle and lower reaches of the Ganjiang River were selected as a case study. The results show that flood reduction at three downstream flood control points ranged from 1080 to 5359 m3/s for designed floods with different return periods, which increased by about 333~1498 m3/s in comparison with the conventional operation. Considering that the maximum water level of reservoirs using DP-POA and the conventional operation is the same, this indicated that DP-POA can make full use of the reservoirs’ flood control storage to reduce downstream flood peaks. In addition, the flood diversion volume of the flood storage area using DP-POA ranged from 0.33 × 108 to 1.79 × 108 m3 for designed floods with 200-year, 300-year, and 500-year return periods, which is smaller than that using the conventional operation.
Highlights
Flood hazards are the most frequent natural disaster in the world and have become intensified due to global warming [1,2]
Progressive Optimality Algorithm (POA) [3] combined with the simulation model was applied to find the optimal operation polices for the complex flood control system, in which Dynamic Programming (DP) is used first to obtain the initial solutions for POA
Based on the objective of minimizing the maximum streamflow of downstream flood control points, this study established an optimal flood control operation model for a complex flood control system composed of cascade reservoirs, navigation-power junctions, flood storage areas, local flow, and flood control points
Summary
Flood hazards are the most frequent natural disaster in the world and have become intensified due to global warming [1,2]. Optimal flood control operation of reservoirs is one of the most important and efficient non-engineering measures [4], which can enhance the basin flood control capacity. Many scholars have carried out a lot of research on optimal flood control operation model construction and optimization algorithms. Many optimal flood control operation models have been proposed for different objectives. There has been some research on flood control operation for multi-reservoir systems in which the concentration has been on minimization of flood peaks at the downstream flood control points and minimizing the maximal reservoir water level [5,6,7,8]. Some research concentrates on the dynamic flood limiting water level to address the conflict between flood control and reservoir benefit [9,10,11,12]
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