Scenario-based approach for emergency operational response: Implications for reservoir management decisions

Abstract

This paper presents a flexible scenario-based approach for an emergency operational treatment involving a potential risk assessment. We demonstrated emergency situations via the surrogate variable set and examined two representative problems to illustrate the embedding of several proxies of natural hazards into an emergency response: (I) a reservoir encounters hazardous events but does not break, and (II) a basin under extreme conditions with an unavoidable dam-break flood. Moreover, emergency response implementation is a valuable method for guiding crisis-recovery schedules by incorporating both multi-danger source impacts and user-friendly operational strategies, along with their potential operational risk. We demonstrated multiple applications of the proposed approach to a dual-unconstructed reservoir system and presented three cases to illustrate the procedures discussed in the study. The application results indicated that the proposed approach is effective in ensuring the stability of the disaster relief system, even in the case of an unexpected dam-break flood. However, it has significant negative effects on the downstream socioeconomic activities, particularly for the consequences of high flood frequencies or dam-break floods. Moreover, these applications validate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed approach, as they facilitate a systematic safety analysis and exhibit a promising potential for filling the knowledge gap between a complex cautionary phenomena and real-world management decision-making.