Quantitative assessment of safety, society and economy, sustainability benefits from the combined use of reservoirs

Abstract

The joint operation of reservoirs is a major method of water resource development and management. To ensure the sustainable development of river basins and maintain the health of rivers, it is necessary to establish a comprehensive scheduling and operation method for reservoirs that is unified with the coordination of benefits, disaster reduction and ecology, and consider how to obtain the maximum benefit from different scheduling methods. Therefore, taking benefit as an effective way to evaluate the effect of reservoir combined operation. Based on the multi-disciplinary theories of emergy, economics, hydrology, and ecosystem service functions, this article propose a multidimensional benefits evaluation theory and quantitative method system under the joint application of reservoirs, covering safety (flood damage, sedimentation), socioeconomic (power generation, water supply), and sustainability (ecological environment) benefits. Taking the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River controlled by the Sanmenxia and Xiaolangdi reservoirs as an example, a large historical flood in 1843 (hydrological frequency of 0.1%) was selected to analyze the multi-dimensional benefits of reservoirs under control and traditional schemes. The results showed that the flood in 1843 was extremely large, resulting in extensive flood damage (control scheme: −212.9 × 108 RMB; traditional scheme: −283.6 × 108 RMB) and the negative sedimentation benefits (control scheme: −268.5 × 108 RMB; traditional scheme: −194.2 × 108 RMB) were relatively large, leading to the comprehensive benefit of both schemes being negative. Although the comprehensive benefit of the control scheme was inferior to that of the traditional scheme, it can effectively mitigate downstream flood damage while satisfying the socio-economic and sustainability benefits; furthermore, the safety benefit has the highest priority in the multi-functional operation of the reservoir. The theory and method system proposed in this paper can quantify the benefits of reservoirs comprehensively, scientifically and effectively, and provide new theories and methods for evaluating the effect of joint operation of reservoirs. A benefit evaluation model covering safety, social economy, and sustainability is helpful for the establishment and implementation of sustainable development strategies for humans and nature.